This image is the cover for the book Secret Lovers, Paul Christopher Novels

Secret Lovers, Paul Christopher Novels

An American spy confronts personal and political intrigues when he obtains a Russian dissident’s explosive manuscript in this Cold War spy thriller.

In West Berlin, CIA agent Paul Christopher receives a dissident Russian novelist’s handwritten manuscript from a nervous courier. Minutes after the handoff, the courier’s spine is nearly snapped by a passing black sedan. Meanwhile in Rome, Christopher’s wife Cathy takes a famous film director as a lover to stir her husband out of his cool and unfeeling stoicism.

These two seemingly discrete events set in motion a spiral of operational and personal intrigue that leads Christopher from clandestine meetings in the cafes of old Europe to a rendezvous with an operative on the front lines of the Cold War in the Congo. All the while, he secretly arranges the publication of a novel that could bring the Soviet system to its knees, and races to identify the leak that compromised the messenger—and possibly his entire mission.

Charles McCarry

A former operative for the CIA, Charles McCarry (b. 1930) is America’s most revered author of espionage fiction. Born in Massachusetts, McCarry began his writing career in the army, as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. In the 1950s he served as a speechwriter for President Eisenhower before taking a post with the CIA, for which he traveled the globe as a deep cover operative. He left the Agency in 1967, and set about converting his experiences into fiction. His first novel, The Miernik Dossier (1971), introduced Paul Christopher, an American spy who struggles to balance his family life with his work. McCarry has continued writing about Christopher and his family for decades, producing ten novels in the series to date. A former editor-at-large for National Geographic, McCarry has written extensive nonfiction, and continues to write essays and book reviews for various national publications. Ark (2011) is his most recent novel.

The Overlook Press