My husband and I are continuing to read and enjoy this spy series. The Secret Lovers is the third one. Its title turned out to have a double meaning. Several characters are double agents. Many have relationships that go back a long way, including to the Spanish Civil War and even to the Russian Revolution. Everyone has secrets.

Paul Christopher, special agent of the CIA, is the protagonist in the series. To make things as confusing as possible, this one takes place earlier than the previous book, The Tears of Autumn. Paul is married to a psychologically fragile woman from a wealthy Southern family. Their love is strong but she is not doing well with being the wife of a spy who is continually going off to various European countries on dangerous missions about which he can tell her nothing.

The story is set in 1960. The Cold War is as cold as it always was. The operation that makes up the plot has to do with smuggling a novel out of the USSR, the author being in a Soviet prison. It was cool to have all that Russian literary intrigue mixed in.

I must say that reading The Secret Lovers was a test of my mental acuity and memory as I struggled to keep track of all the threads. I had to be in Paul Christopher's mind while at the same time learning some facts before he did. Forget all those games you see on-line to sharpen your mind. Just read Charles McCarry once in a while and you will stay sharp.

Nevertheless, and sorry to John le Carre, I think this is the best novel I have read about the toll that working in intelligence inflicts on the personal lives of its agents.20th-century-fiction cia thriller8 s Jenny (Reading Envy)3,876 3,530

(I'm still catching up on my from the books I read during the 24 in 48 marathon!)

This is the third Paul Christopher book, a spy series from the 1970s I learned about from a Goodreads friend. I've been enjoying them; each one is told differently and has different characters, but always Paul Christopher.

This one follows his relationship story more, but the espionage writing gets really lazy. In the last fifty pages, most of what we know about the people involved comes from Christopher's girlfriend's godfather, as related during one dinner conversation. It's the author didn't want to have to work out how to reveal the details throughout the story, so press pause - info dump!

I did enjoy the double meanings of "secret lovers" and to see his girlfriend go on her own journey to reconcile what loving a secret agent means. I'll probably seek out the other books in this series but I'm not in as much hurry as I was before.24in48 read2016 secret-agents-and-detectives7 s Feliks496

Its very difficult to combine romance and espionage effectively. Many, many spy novelists attempt it and fail. But 'The Secret Lovers' is one which achieves what it sets out to do. Not only does it succeed --it really sets the bar for any other such novel. It is really almost a romance-story with just a touch of espionage thrown in. It feels a real-life love story, comes across extremely personal and confessional. You feel as if you're reading a diary, or private correspondence.

You might assume only John leCarre writes 'psychology-based' espionage. But Len Deighton does so (in the Bernard Samson series) and Charles McCarry does so here. 'Secret Lovers' is one of my favorite modern novels, period; in addition to being a gem in the espionage genre. It is unique, and deserves to stand alongside the best of either of the other two giants I just mentioned. McCarry absolutely puts himself in their class with this title.

The plot is besides-the-point of the *feelings* explored in this tale. The issues are intimate. The dilemma is essentially this: exactly how should individuals who work in clandestine service, manage their private relationships? Loving relationships are supposed to be open and trusting. No restrictions or boundaries.

But when you work in security, it is anathema to let slip any info which you do not absolutely need to. These type of personnel live in 'nested shells' of access-and-denial: a Faberge egg.

Can a relationship progress with such inherent secrecy involved? Can you live with someone without offering full disclosure? Can you forbid your lover important parts of yourself? 'Secret Lovers' is one of the very few works of espionage which can be taken as the best kind of illuminating, penetrating, romantic fiction: the kind you might find in an Anne Beattie novel.

The prose is lyrical and poetic, the moods and words of the two lovers lingers in the mind poignantly and long after the read is over. Sublime, and beautiful; savory, and bittersweet; with rich vocabulary and haunting imagery.

Worth coming back to, for many return reads. genre-thrillers6 s KOMET1,157 135

This is the second Charles McCarry novel in the Paul Christopher series that I've read, and it had more twists and turns than any roller coaster I remember holding on to for dear life. It is 1960 and Christopher, a polyglot CIA agent working in Covert Action (CA), has met on a West Berlin street in the wee hours of the morning with Horst Bülow, one of his contacts. Bülow, an erstwhile Abwehr agent (i.e. the German military intelligence arm during the Nazi era), had travelled over from East Berlin with a manuscript that had been spirited out of the Soviet Union. It represents the magnum opus of a celebrated writer who had been in the gulags over the previous 2 decades following his return from Spain, where he had served the Loyalist cause during the civil war there. Suddenly, as Christopher and Bülow part company, a Black Opel appears as if out of nowhere, and in passing, strikes Bülow, killing him instantly. Christopher is shocked, but quickly composes himself and later flies to Paris, where he meets with Pachen, his boss who had flown in from Washington to consult with Christopher.

This sets in train a sequence of events that sees Christopher on the move --- to Rome (where he has a home with his wife Cathy; their relationship represents a study of how a life lived as a spy under deep cover can impact in various ways on a marriage), Paris, West Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Africa --- to discover the leak that caused Bülow's death. Plus, resolving the matter of what to do with the manuscript, whose publication would be a revelatory and damning indictment of the Soviet system. McCarry assembles here a colorful cast of characters and with great skill, ties together the various threads of the novel into a cohesive and compelling whole. For any reader of espionage novels, he/she will be in for a merry ride --- much as I was. charles-mccarry fiction-espionage-thriller5 s Jake1,834 61

Charles McCarry meets the kind of Goldilocks/middlebrow standard I look for in spy novels: not too complex, not too simple, not too jingoistic, not too cynical. Juuuuust right.

This is the third I've read of his Paul Christopher series and the last two, the plot gripped me. It's a deep plot but not so convoluted that it loses the reader. Every scene has a purpose; there are few red herrings. It hurtles its way towards its sad, surprising end, tying in perfectly with the title of the novel. 

The characters are great too. I McCarry's say-little, stay-focused protagonist and how he navigates the complex world of Cold War espionage. James Bond he is not, but it is a realistic, honest look at how field agents actually do the work. 

Yet it's McCarry's attitude towards nationalism and sex that really stand out to me. McCarry is not an "America, hell yeah!" kind of writer. He doesn't glorify his come country, nor does he spend his time knocking it many espionage works do. Spying is just what Paul Christopher does and he does it well and this happens to be his team. Stay in the game long enough, it'll knock the ideology out of the most hardened zealot. Yet Christopher never loses sight of his mission.

And while I don't want to spoil much regarding sex, the book breaks from conventional male-dominant norms in spy novels in a healthy way. I don't want to give McCarry "woke points" but the book is open-minded for its time and might have rubbed the right people the wrong way. I appreciated that as someone who just read Goldfinger a few weeks ago and is still angry about the "man screws lesbian straight" subplot. 

If you are looking for an entertaining, engaging spy series set in the Cold War, you couldn't do much better than this. espionage3 s Bradley WestAuthor 6 books33

I'm a big fan of Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper. So when a friend urged me to read The Secret Lovers next, I was primed to go. From the outset I was disappointed at the painfully slow pace at which the various story lines unfolded. Le Carre mastered the art of the excruciatingly-slow-reveal that still kept readers up late, followed by Len Deighton in his Game, Set and Match trilogy. McCarry writes well and I Paul Christopher . . . but not enough to slog on beyond Chapter 12 (about 60% through). I can smell the double agents and the intrigue is building, but I've got a dozen other books on my must-read-soon list and this one didn't make the cut. I'm confident there's a solid ending with a couple of nefarious twists, but after a solid week of being ignored on the nightstand I'm giving up and putting it back on the shelf, bookmark in place in case I have a change of heart.thrillers2 s Ric394 43

(This October of the Pandemic year 2020 I started reading the Paul Christopher series in sequence from Book 1 to 10 spanning original publication dates from 1974 to 2007)

I first read Book in 2016 having just discovered this American author of spy novels. It still delivers an evocative experience though not as striking as the first read. Some of the details of the plot now seem much clearer, especially the characters. What confused me previously was the changing names of the novel's personnel and the various story lines as the author moved back forth in the timeline. Anyway, the key impression carried over from the first read, that of changing mores, is even more strongly reinforced on the second pass. A stark indicator is how society and governments view and deal with homosexuality.

The new impression I have from this second read is how the author loves to weave tales. For several characters, he goes back to their formative tears to try and explain their behavior in the present tense of the novel. They all tend to be colorful. I think the best time to read a literary spy novel such as this is during late fall or early winter, when the lengthening days invite one to cozy up with the flights of fancy of great storytellers.

I forgot about the plot twist at the end of the book and so enjoyed the final reveal as much now than I did then.

--------------------------
Review from March, 2016

Spy story, told in wonderfully nuanced prose.

This starts out as a love story, which in the loveless, trust-free lives of spooks can only mean it will end in tragedy. There are several lovers - the American spymaster, Paul Christopher, a recurring character in this series of books by Charles McCarry and his flighty, unfaithful wife Cathy; Otto Rothschild, aging agent, mentor to Christopher, and his very young spouse; Kaminsky, Russian author whose partner is perhaps his native Russia; Cathy and her cadre of occasional lovers. Take your pick. In fact, the real secret lovers are revealed later in the book. The withholding of this fact until very near the end is very spook-ish, just the kind of thing that make spy books so engaging. And even later, it comes to light that the author had a double entendre in mind, for in fact the central theme of the book is the nature of the spy as lover of secrets.

This, my second book by the author, and reading the series off sequence, was just perfect for a late winter read. The tragedy of the untrusting nature of the spy seeking love in their lives is a theme just ripe for literary picking. I thought this book might bear similarities to John le Carré's Smiley's People but, in fact, it is a different treatment, for here the nature of the spymaster is unrelenting, overwhelming any hope for that human aspiration to love and be loved.

It would take a certain frame of mind to truly this book, a willingness to let the author lead the way in his unhurried fashion, a receptiveness to the nuances of culture and insights, the hunger to be surprised and led down unknown paths. And of course, to re-live the bad old days of the Cold War. Recommended to fans of spy stories written as great literature.2 s Michael Martz975 30

A great, old-school spy novel by the wonderful Charles McCarry. The 'Secret Lovers' is a look at a complex investigation back in the Cold War era using techniques that involved more thinking than today's data-based approach. Interesting plot, steady pace, great characters, fine tradecraft, tremendous writing...excellent!2 s Nooilforpacifists916 55

Wow. First I've read of his since I was a lad.cold-war-fiction thriller2 s Jack SussekAuthor 4 books33

McCarry is my new found spy writer. Where have I been all these years? Similar to LeCarre in some ways he weaves an incredible story. This is the third one of his that I've read and none have disappointed. This story is reminiscent of the CIA's role in publishing Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. I'll just leave that there.1 Karen1,903 107

Charles McCarry was a CIA officer operating under deep cover in Europe, Asia and Africa during the Cold War. That background undoubtedly has had a profound impact on the "tradecraft" that he describes in his books. His spies move through their allotted tasks with a surety that makes the espionage aspects extremely realistic and believable. There's a lot more to THE SECRET LOVERS than the spying element however. The book heads rapidly into personal territory, taking the reader voyeuristically into the love and married life of Agent Paul Christopher. The mixture of the espionage and the personal creates quite a closed, incestuous feeling to the book - especially as the intertwining of the characters is revealed. Christopher's wife Cathy meets up with an old schoolfriend, who is now married to Otto Rothchild, master spy once, now a desperately unwell and frail man. Rothchild is an old colleague of Christopher's, and it is to him that Christopher and his boss turn when a manuscript is smuggled out of Russia. The writer of the manuscript is an old friend of Rothchild's and there is great concern for the life of the Russian writer in the event that the manuscript is published. And the links continue on - right into Cathy's family.

Paul Christopher is a dispassionate man, a good and able agent, an analytical man. A man who wrote poetry in his earlier life and is now almost embarrassed to be reminded of it. His nature, and his job, creates problems within his marriage though. As analytical, as controlled, as dispassionate as he is, Cathy is the exact opposite. His secret life leads her to create her own secret life - to take a constant stream of sex partners and lovers - to create a residence of her own. The difference is, of course, that Cathy can't keep the secret and she takes almost vicious delight in telling Christopher of her exploits - trying to excite some sort of reaction in him.

In all aspects of the story, THE SECRET LOVERS is dense, involving and slowly burns to a resolution, with some elements that were completely unexpected and some that you just dreaded coming. I love Paul Christopher as a character - whilst he's a very human and accessible central protagonist, there's also something deeply and profoundly secretive about him. The reader can sympathise with Cathy's frustration, if not empathise with her actions.

Everyone in this book is slightly damaged by the lives that they have lived, yet the book is not without resolution, or without hope, or without moments of great enjoyment. But the story is bleak, understandably and realistically part of the Cold War. The personal is often equally as bleak and complicated and fraught. If you're looking for a good, slow-burning, involving, very human espionage story, then THE SECRET LOVERS could be a book that you enjoy as much as I did.
review-books thriller1 Tom564 6

This McCarry Christopher spy novel originally was published in 1977, and recent reissued in hardback. The story places Paul Christopher living in Rome and operating in Africa, Europe and elsewhere. Wife Cathy is an integral part of the storyline - the spy op is a bit convoluted to follow, but Christopher is torn between his wife and his work.
Again, the Paul Christopher character is one of the best realized fictional spies, operating without cover in all types of roles.2009-books-read1 Sandi1,601 47

A good Cold War spy story though I have enjoyed the other books in the series more. The plot was plenty complicated but one of the female characters was particularly grating and unrealistic compared to the others in the book. Listened to the audio version which was read by Stefan Rudnicki. audio crime-mystery-thriller-suspense read-20151 Brandon Gryder158 3

Do yourself a favor and read the Paul Christopher books by Charles McCarry. Easily our greatest spy novelist. Had he decided to write cookbooks or popular fiction he would have been considered a master of those genres as well. Brilliant.

This was another re-read, at least my fourth time to read the series, and it won't be my last.1 Harriet899

I read this after the Miernik Dossier to get some back story on Paul Christopher. There's quite alot on his marriage to Cathy, most of it very irritating. The last part of the book makes it all worth it! It's got more twists and turns than Coney Island's Cyclone.1 Douglas SainsburyAuthor 4 books6

I became a Charles McCarry fan last year and have read several of his novels. THE SECRET LOVERS is the third in the Paul Christopher series. It traces Paul's involvement in helping to smuggle an anti-Russian novel out of Russia, which was written by a Russian author who loves his country, but not its government. One aspect of this book I thoroughly enjoyed was the emphasis on Paul's life. McCarry shares the back story on Paul's early years as well as his commitment to his craft as a spy. He falls is love with the daughter of a wealthy couple who has the resources to live a spontaneous life as Paul's wife. She resents his secret, frequent trips to who knows where. Of course he cannot tell her anything about these "business trips," a fact that drives Cathy into fits of routine sex with faceless men to retaliate against Paul's secret life. These two truly love each other, but cannot reconcile their marriage so that both can accept the other's secret endeavors. The plot involves several other interesting characters, some of whom are also in the spy business. McCarry also shares several spy tactics, which I find fascinating. The mind of an agent (spy) is rigid and disciplined by necessity. The prose is excellent as always with McCarry. False2,372 10

Spy tradecraft at it's best. And to think I learned about McCarry through a blurb mention in The New York Times Book Review. I have no idea why I didn't know of him earlier. I've been reading all of his books. So far, the only two that have bogged me down were "Shelley's Heart" and "The Great Southwest." This novel weaves around a Russian dissident and his masterpiece manuscript. Some of the characters from previous novels make another appearance. I had decided there was a comfort (as Smiley and his group with Le Carre) returning to these people you know and their growing histories. In a dust jacket blurb, Elmore Leonard wrote, "Thank God McCarry has been rescued from retirement and written another book. I've been waiting years to find out what happened to that old boy, Paul Christopher." Sadly, I might add, we'll never hear Leonard's voice again. His family seemed to have made the (wise) decision not to continue his stories through another writer, something I've agreed with over time. I think the worst of them are Robert Parker's family (his sons) who have really milked the cash cow dry. Paul Christopher has become my new George Smiley.fiction mystery-suspense-spy-intelligence Al1,544 52

If you your espionage novels murky, devoid of action, and featuring lots of high-flown but unly love repartee, The Secret Lovers is for you. That said, McCarry is a good writer, and this was enough to carry me through to the end. My problem is that I didn't find either Paul Christopher or his wife, Cathy, to be remotely believable or interesting as characters, and that's a tough thing to get past when one or both of them together are present for long periods of time. I get that Christopher is dedicated to his craft to the exclusion of all else, and that Cathy a physical gem who can't control herself, but McCarry amps this up so high that they become caricatures, at least to me. If you love McCarry's work, have at it but don't say I didn't warn you. As for me, I'm not sure I'm up for more of this series. Joel Z. Williams12

The best closing line of any book I've ever read, when told by his cheating wife that she's about to turn over a new leaf and be loyal to him...("but what is that in real money?") You will have to read the book to understand the context but it is particularly biting! Just a brilliant way to end a book with an inside joke.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review Tom Fuldner3

Loved the characters, but some elements of the story were hard to follow. The anecdotes by the character Rodegas was especially challenging. Wish more loose ends could have been resolved, such as Christopher’s association with Moroni. Monique Stampleman1 review1 follower

A mixed Review

The writing is transportive. The plot of espionage not tightly drawn, but it is less important than what is happening between the characters. The best of this kind since I read Lawrence Durrell many years ago. Ann Repetto393 2

Christoper's wife Cathy drove me nuts. Hopefully she'll be out for the rest. d the story but I'm not sure I got all the nuances.mccarry Lisa178 3

The double entendres of the title was inspired. Story hit one patch of being too convoluted to be believable, but McCarry’s writing is terrific overall. Phenomene 328

Convoluted plot! Robbie SheerinAuthor 2 books19

One of my favorite authors, but this had to much romance. PaulaAuthor 3 books7

DNF Couldn't stand one more second with Cathy. What an unappealing, annoying character. Viktor369

Kindle version has an unimaginable amount of typos. Em dashes are mere dashes throughout, making for some confusing reading at times.

Not as good as the first two Paul Christopher novels, and I hated the info dump towards the end. And I hated the "He knew after saying something to the character early on", but we the Dear Reader are not let in on it until the end. Matt Ebner52

Excellent. It’s “lovers of secrets,” not “lovers in secret.” Perrystroika96 27

My reaction was mixed. There are things about this book that are so good that the disappointing aspects only disappoint all the more.

I enjoyed the prose style, and the mystery is intriguing as it unfolds, but the whole plot seems less than the sum of its parts when it's finally revealed, so the ending doesn't quite come off. I never quite understood what Otto and Maria's motivations in this whole scheme were. And why did Horst Bulow have to die? The whole thing is rather bewilderingly convoluted, and the underlying motivations seem to be straight out of a melodramatic romantic plot, which clashes with the tone of realism created by McCarry's magisterial descriptions of tradecraft.

Does it even make sense? Otto uses Horst Bulow to spirit Kamensky's text out of Russia, and then has him killed in front of his handler Christopher. Why? The book seems to suggest Otto is ashamed of his affair with Kamensky and wants to cover it up, but the murder only attracts Christopher to investigate more fully and expose the whole story. Otto's homosexual affair with Kamensky is treated as a key to the puzzle, but I'm not sure it explains anything about his irrational behavior.

Furthermore, the Paul-Cathy subplot swiftly becomes tedious after about the first hundred pages. It's just not a very interesting relationship. Cathy is unintelligent and narcissitic, while Paul reads more a projection of male fantasy (a secret agent who is not only a skilled poet, but who is smarter, more principled and more sexually attractive than anyone else but seems to lack any other qualities) than a plausibly individuated character. This makes him a bad narrator because he feels insufficiently real to function as a point of psychological identification.

There is a significant amount of foreshadowing that seems to point to Cathy being an integral part of the plot, that the two plots, Otto-Kamensky and Paul-Cathy, will converge. That's how I interpreted it when Paul found out that Cathy knew Maria previously, that she had dinner with Maria and Otto, that she had an affair with a KGB agent named Franco Moroni, and that she knew Jorge de Rodegas. I expected she was going to be revealed as a player in the book, but that never happened and the foreshadowing turned out to go nowhere.

As further stumbling blocks, one might mention the pervasive sexism, the general coarseness and brutality of the world depicted but whose values are never questioned or submitted to critical scrutiny and some rather interminable love scenes which not only fail to advance the plot in any material way; they put on display some of the author's more distasteful sexual proclivities. I would categorize this as "oversharing".

YOu can also see a bit why the Christopher books never really caught on beyond the niche audience. He falls into a kind of no man's land; too highbrow for the pulpy bottomfeeders Ludlum and Forsythe; but with the wrong kind of hero and politics to appeal to the literary set Graham Greene or John Le Carre.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review Jay CaselbergAuthor 75 books30

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