The Company: A Novel of the CIA (Hardcover)

'The American le Carre' New York Times; 'If Robert Littell didn't invent the American Spy novel, he should have' Tom Clancy

This mammoth novel of spying and intrigue opens in 1978 with the murder of Albino Luciani, better known as Pope John Paul I, and then moves back to 1950 to introduce the main characters through whose eyes readers will view the Cold War. Among them is Jack McAuliffe, a CIA rookie when we first meet him, stationed in divided Berlin and learning his trade from the brilliant, if unconventional, Harvey Torriti, alias The Sorcerer. Back home in the USA, counterintelligence guru Jim Angleton will live to regret his close friendship with MI6 agent Kim Philby, as the British spy betrays his confidence again and again. The Soviet view is represented in part by 'Eugene Dodgson', an American-educated Russian who operates successfully on behalf of the Communist cause in his enemy's own backyard. Robert Littell's mammoth novel spans the 50 years of the Cold War, a period so long that by the final third of the story the agents' children are themselves engaged in Company work. Sensibly, the author highlights only those operations that directly involve the main characters, even if this means that world-shaking events such as the assassination of JFK and the Vietnam War are mentioned only in passing. Even allowing for the significant near-omissions, Littell manages to pack the novel with incident, keeping his characters neck-deep in intrigue. As well as Berlin, the broad canvas includes Hungary at the time of the doomed uprising against Communism in 1956, the disastrous attempt by Cuban exiles to land at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro in 1961, and even the CIA's confused handling of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The connecting thread is the patient planning of a Soviet operation known as Kholstomer, designed to destabilize the USA without firing a shot, and the CIA's attempts to uncover the threat from within. Littell populates his narrative with characters who operate with a skewed sense of morality and a total commitment to their respective causes, yet still manages to make these dangerous obsessives sympathetic. It is interesting to note just how many of the operations end in failure or frustration, and still more fascinating to see that the problems that occur are sometimes engineered by people connected with the project in order to throw the opposition off balance, even at the expense of friendly agents' lives. Loyalties are severely tested by a combination of paranoia and hard intelligence, and even best friends suspect each other of working against the interests of the cause. Littell has produced a vast yet perfectly balanced novel that thanks to the author's considerable story-telling skills - not to mention the CIA's frantic activity over the period covered - is never less than enthralling. Real people mix with fictional characters in a world where nobody can be trusted, and where their games put all of our lives at risk. (Kirkus UK)

There are few good books about the CIA. . . Mr Littell has aimed magnificently high