The Tears of Autumn (Paul Christopher #2) in Espionage Aficionados

Jun 12, 2016 Bradley West rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, thrillers

Charles McCarry is a less well-known spy novelist than le Carre or Deighton, but belongs in the same conversation even if "Tears of Autumn" was the only book he published. McCarry's protagonist Paul Christopher is somewhere between super human (e.g. ability to pick up almost any language--even tonal ones--in a month or two) and all-too-human (e.g. his feelings for his Australian lover). The pace is fast, the settings described in sufficient detail to convince the reader that McCarry knows them f ...more

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Mar 01, 2014 Doubledf99.99 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spy-espionage-thriller

Pretty good fast paced thriller of events from September 1963 to November 1963 that takes place in Vietnam, and the US, and on the trail of leads Christopher travels to Saigon, Paris, Rome, and the Congo.

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Oct 16, 2019 Philip rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-series, cambodia-laos-vietnam, 1970s, spy-fiction-american, real-spies-on-fake-spies

Maybe 3 stars if a stand-alone, but I rounded down because this was just such a disappointing follow-up to McCarry's quirky but delightful debut, The Miernik Dossier.

This time around (four years after the events in Miernik), Paul Christopher investigates the Kennedy assassination, since he alone in all the world understands what really happened:

The explanation struck like a bell in Christopher's mind. He knew who had arranged the death of the President...All his life, Christopher's unconscious h Maybe 3 stars if a stand-alone, but I rounded down because this was just such a disappointing follow-up to McCarry's quirky but delightful debut, The Miernik Dossier.

This time around (four years after the events in Miernik), Paul Christopher investigates the Kennedy assassination, since he alone in all the world understands what really happened:

The explanation struck like a bell in Christopher's mind. He knew who had arranged the death of the President...All his life, Christopher's unconscious had released images and he had learned to trust this trick of his mind. He often knew what men had done before they confessed their acts to him.*

He then "goes rogue" and leaves the organization - unnamed, but obviously the CIA - traveling first to Saigon for fully half the book, but then globe-hopping between Rome, Switzerland, Rhodesia and Paris to assemble the pieces of his conspiracy theory. Long story short (and SPOILER for anyone who's still thinking of reading this - which at this point should be no one), everyone killed Kennedy - the Russians, the Cubans, the Mafia, the Vietnamese...

I dunno...maybe this book was written in the early years of conspiracy fiction and so was still original and surprising, but today it just reads as a confusing mess.

Unlike the epistolic Miernik, which was told through a series of incident reports, cable traffic, interview/interrogation transcripts, police logs, etc., Autumn is a straight-forward third person narrative, and as a result the character or Christopher comes off as a different person than in the first book (at least IMHO), where he was just one of many players.

Anyway - having also recently read (and been disappointed by) the much later The Shanghai Factor, think I'm done with McCarry for a while. Which is too bad, because he's a good writer and he certainly knows his tradecraft and global hotspots. Will probably give him another shot down the road, but for now it's on to (hopefully) bigger and better things.

* Okay, why do CIA case officers-turned-writers insist on giving their protagonists such unnecessary super powers? Jason Matthews did the same thing in Red Sparrow by inexplicably giving Dominika the ability to "see colors," which had zero to do with the story. Isn't being a spy/killer/sex machine enough for either of these guys?? ...more

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Jul 04, 2018 Nooilforpacifists rated it really liked it

Shelves: thriller

Compelling lead character with a wildly improbable thriller. The roller coaster is fun, while you can suspend disbelief.

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May 15, 2017 Michael Martz rated it really liked it

'The Tears of Autumn' is supposedly a classic espionage novel by one of the genre's greats, Charles McCarry. I still can't believe I hadn't heard of either until about a month ago. I'm glad I'm finally on the bandwagon!

The Tears of Autumn was published in 1974, when both the war in Vietnam and the assassination of JFK were still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. In the novel, Paul Christopher, a CIA 'lone-wolf' spy, begins to form an idea on who was responsible for Kennedy's death and wants to in ...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Sam Reaves rated it really liked it

Charles McCarry worked for the CIA and then wrote a superb series of espionage novels, of high literary quality. This is his take on the JFK assassination. It's the fall of 1963 and CIA officer Paul Christopher sees bad things coming in South Vietnam. Diem goes down, and when JFK is shot twenty-one days later, Christopher sees a link. Nobody else wants him to pursue it, however, not the agency and not the dead president's minions. So Christopher takes off on his own... ...more

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