Charles McCarry Books In Order

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Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Charles McCarry
Charles McCarry was born June 14, 1930 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and he lived in Virginia.

McCarry served in the United States Army, where he was a correspondent for Stars & Stripes, was a speech writer in the Eisenhower administration, and was a small-town newspaperman.

From 1958 to 1967 he worked for the CIA, under deep cover in places such as Europe, Africa, and Asia. His cover, however, was not as a journalist or writer.

Charles contributed several pretty important pieces to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, as well as other national publications, and was editor-at-large for National Geographic.

Charles believed that the best novels are just about every day, ordinary things like death, love, loneliness, fatherhood, trust, and marriage. These were the themes that he also tried to write about.

He felt if he had his career to do over again, he would have written about some pediatrician, anonymously. This is because he believed himself to be a novelist, not a writer of spy fiction. Yet many of his novels, including the ones he wrote that didn’t star Paul Christopher that had a strong focus on espionage.

He died in Fairfax County, Virginia on February 26, 2019 at the age of 88. He was married and had four sons. His family lived in the Berkshire region, an area where his family still lives.

Charles’ debut novel, called “The Miernik Dossier”, was released in the year 1971 and is the first of his “Paul Christopher” series, which are the books that he is best known for writing.. His work is from the literature, thriller, and espionage genres.

“The Secret Lovers” is the third novel in the “Paul Christopher” series and was released in the year 1977. Just minutes after the handoff, the courier’s spine is snapped neatly by an impact with a passing black sedan. At the same time, in Rome, Christopher’s wife Cathy takes as a lover a famous film director to stir her husband out of his stoicism that defines his entire personality.

These apparently discrete events set off a spiral of personal and operational intrigue that lead Christopher from meetings with one aging agent in some cafes of old Europe to a rendezvous with an operative on the front lines of the Cold War in the Congo while he secretly sets up the publication of his novel that might drop the Soviet system right to its knees and sprints to identify the leak that left the messenger compromised, and potentially his whole mission.

“The Last Supper” is the fifth novel in the “Paul Christopher” series and was released in the year 1983. Paul Christopher, an old school spy that operates in a world where vicious and clever communists are unquestionably the villains, and who’s dedicated, handsome, and is never short on compliant ladies. Dismissing the feelings of dread his lover Molly Benson has, Paul leaves her bed behind so he can fly off to sixties Vietnam. Sure enough, Molly quickly gets murdered.

The book abruptly flashes to 1926 Germany where Paul’s dad, a young American writer, encounters some minor Prussian nobility and the woman that’s going to become Paul’s mom. Paul’s dad, who is apolitical until the Nazis arrest his wife in the year 1939, joins up with the OSS that is going to become the postwar CIA.

Paul’s dad spies successfully, however his obsessive efforts to track down his wife lead directly to Paul’s dad getting murdered. Paul travels the world to counter communist skullduggery, while he delivers plenty of his own. He retires, after a decade long stint in a Chinese prison, but still investigates his dad’s death. In doing so, he will learn the answer and the reason for Molly’s murder, too. It leads to a stunning twist that turns his world completely on end.

“The Bride of the Wilderness” is the sixth novel in the “Paul Christopher” series and was released in the year 1988. Henry Harding (Fanny’s dad) has known Oliver Barebones since both men were kids. Together they survived the Great Fire and the Great Plague. Now they are rich, unmarried, and middle-aged. Everybody’s stunned when Oliver, a lifelong bachelor, falls headfirst for Rose, a superstitious young girl. In just two days, he has made up his mind to marry her.

For the Barebones and the Hardings, it’s going to be years before they find happiness like this again. Ruin comes for all of them in the shape of Alfred Montagu, a cold-hearted moneylender that ensnares them in crushing debt and plots to marry Fanny himself. Fanny, after her dad dies, tries to take refuge in France. It is not nearly far enough to escape any of her troubles, so with Rose and Oliver, she heads to a far-away place known as Connecticut. She dodges Montagu by diving into the teeth of dangers that no London lass could possibly imagine.

“Old Boys” is the ninth novel in the “Paul Christopher” series and was released in the year 2004. Paul Christopher, who is now an aging yet still remarkably fit seventyish, dines at home with Horace, who is his cousin and also an ex-agent. Dinner’s uneventful and delicious. One day later, Paul’s disappeared.

The months go by. Paul’s ashes are delivered by some Chinese official to the American consulate in Beijing and a memorial service is held back in Washington. Horace isn’t convinced for a second that Paul’s actually dead and, enlisting the aid of six other retired colleagues, a kind of all-star backfield of the old Outfit, he gets the “Old Boys” back in the game to locate Paul Christopher.

The begin with a picture found in Paul’s study: a woman’s hand that holds an ancient scroll, once in the possession of the Nazis, now being equally sought after by Muslim extremists and the American government. Hunted by terrorists and harassed by American intelligence, Horace Christopher and the Old Boys travel around the globe, from Tel Aviv to Rome, from Brazil to Xinjiang, and Moscow to Budapest, on the hunt of Paul and this unspeakably dangerous truth.

2 Responses to “Charles McCarry”

1. Katherine Summers: 2 years ago

   Is the Mulberry Bush Charles McCarry’s last novel?

   Reply
   • Graeme: 2 years ago

     Yes

     Reply