The Confidential Agent– Graham Greene, 1939 ★½

Spy vs. Spy

You can take the man out of a war, but can you take the war out of a man? Graham Greene uses the device of a spy novel to ask this question, foregoing such typical spy-fiction elements as plot and suspense in favor of mystery and atmosphere for a novel that takes a long time going (mostly) nowhere.

The title character, a middle-aged man known to us only by a letter, D., arrives in England from his war-torn homeland, also unnamed. His mission, explained after some bumping around and a beating, has to do with getting a British coal-mining concern to do business with his nation’s government. The nation is currently embroiled in civil war, and an agent from the rebel side, identified as L., is hot on D.’s trail.

President Reagan: The Role Of A Lifetime – Lou Cannon, 1991 ★★★★

Weighing the Reagan Legacy

Two things Lou Cannon wants you to come away thinking after reading this, his widely-respected account of Ronald Reagan’s presidency:

1) Reagan was a really nice guy who did some decent things in office.

2) Americans must never, ever elect someone like Reagan again.

The Afghan – Frederick Forsyth, 2006 ★

A Thriller Out of Time

Frederick Forsyth has owned me for over 30 years, since The Day Of The Jackal held me hostage for a sleepless week in boarding school. Forsyth has put me ringside while World War III is averted, powerful bad guys are chastened with vigor, and the value of committed individualism is repeatedly, gloriously affirmed.

But the Cold War verities which spawned Forsyth’s career have given way. 9/11 showed you don’t need a Politburo to direct large-scale destruction upon the West. Simple good/evil binaries between freedom and Communism have been replaced by self-loathing democracies fed up with their own capitalist excess.

New technology, like drones and instantaneous eavesdropping, has made Forsyth’s dependency on isolated men of action seem almost quaint, not to mention sexist and possibly homophobic.