Tuesday, September 12, 2006
unexpected book reaction
I've always enjoyed Blackford Oakes, William F. Buckley's mucho macho CIA hero, main character of ten previous fun, intruiging (yes, that's a pun) stories. In what is almost certainly the last one, Last Call for Blackford Oakes, Blackford poses as a publishing scion to enter Moscow to prevent an assassination and aid the end of the Cold War (remember that Buckley is big Ronald Reagan fan). The book seemed deliciously promising. I was so looking forward to a juicy ultra-verbal tale. But instead we've got an insouciant disappointment. For starters, this writer whose fingers would in the past have fallen right off had he typed so much as a trite word or phrase has his manly hero who saved a queen and decked most of the KGB fall utterly in love with one glance and has the tough Soviet doctor become all girly and silly as they both turn their lives upside down. Oakes fails to take minimal precautions even I would take and manages to cause murder and mayhem just like that. Oh, yeah, and Graham Greene shows up - spy novelist extraordinaire himself - attending a conference and chit-chatting with arguably the most famous spy in the world, Kim Philby, who in turn becomes Oakes' bete noir. Hasn't there been a lot of talk and fuss about the danger of fictionalized history? What possessed Buckley? This is way beyond implausible, even beyond cliched and obvious, full of made-for-television plot twists and emotional devices. I must finish it just to find out how Oakes meets his rather obviously telegraphed demise (title, anyone?) but I have to sharpen my skimming skills or I'll go mad (make that 'more mad than I already am' and, yes, read 'mad' in both its meanings).
Labels: reflections, writing
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