Second Sight

July 1, 1991
The author calls this the last chapter in the Paul Christopher saga that has occupied him on and off since The Miernik Dossier (1973). Christopher has remained a somewhat shadowy figure, though there is no denying McCarry's remarkable narrative gifts, his imaginative use of little-known information and his insider's knowledge of the CIA. All have been put to better use in previous Chrstopher books than here, however. Second Sight is, to put it mildly, overstuffed, with a narrative that goes all the way back to biblical times and embraces pre-WW II Germany as well as the present. It's a complex tale involving Christopher, his heroic German mother, his daughter who was brought up among a lost Israeli tribe in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, an exotic psychic, an elaborate plot to destabilize the Outfit (read: CIA) and kill Jews, and the current and former Outfit directors. At times McCarry's political views blur his usual sharpness, as in a ludicrous portrait of a highly successful, leftist TV guru; at others, the arcane knowledge he usually interweaves so skillfully seems wilfully dragged in. It's a tribute of sorts that he makes such a high-flown saga readable at all, but his inability to create human characters rather than symbols and his fatal lack of le Carre's wit and sophistication in dealing with often similar material make this an ambitious, if intermittently entertaining failure. 35,000 first printing; author tour.

March 1, 2007
McCarry has been on a roll thanks to the popularity of "Old Boys" and his other hit espionage novels. This 1991 outing finds his signature character, Paul Christopher, called out of retirement to help solve the puzzle of who is kidnapping U.S. agents in the Middle East and draining them of information. McCarry has a pretty solid following, so buy this one.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2007
Leaping from the present day to Hitler's invasion of Poland, and from Europe to North Africa, Vietnam, and Central America, this big, sprawling, convoluted, and brilliant tale is the seventh novel about spy Paul Christopher and his family. Agents of the Outfit are being snatched, drugged, and emptied of all their secrets--then released unharmed and euphoric. Christopher, now retired, is drawn back into action, assigned to neutralize the threat. Told both in flashbacks (the visions of a clairvoyant Berber woman) and through a standard, if lapidary, narrative, the novel is both a family saga and a spy novel. It's also, like McCarry's acclaimed " Old Boys" (2004), a kind of elegy for the bright young men from the Ivies who served in the CIA during the cold war. " Second Sight" has everything a good espionage novel should have: compelling and fully fleshed characters, exotic locales knowingly described, love, betrayal, derring-do, honor, cynicism, and redemption. And in this brief Dan Brown moment in publishing history, it even has a tribe of Jewish Berbers who have pretended to be Muslims for more than two millennia. Originally published in 1991, the novel quickly disappeared. With a McCarry revival in full swing, now is the right time for it to be resurrected. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

June 1, 1992
While it intermittently entertains, this last chapter in the Paul Christopher saga proves to be overreaching and overstuffed.