Reviewed By: John Connolly - Author - RAM
The Company: A Novel of the CIA
Amazon US PB Amazon UK PB Amazon Canada PB
Robert Littell
Class/Genre: Mystery Espionage Thriller
2002
I'm not a huge fan of espionage/ spy thrillers, and Clancy in particular leaves me cold, but The Company is quite simply one of the best books I've read all year. It's hugely ambitious, and feels like it's brilliantly researched (I say "feels" as, frankly, you could fit what I know about the world of spies on the back of a small matchbook, but nothing in this book rang false to my limited sensibilities.) Its scale is breathtaking, and its intermingling of fictional and real-life characters seamless.
What's interesting about Littell's book is that he has taken a genre that, with certain honorable exceptions (le Carre, early Deighton) has become debased in recent years, with characterization and prose style playing second fiddle to technobabble, and infused it with intelligence, wit, and compassion. It's also refreshing, during these dark days, to read a book that doesn't whitewash the CIA, or shy away from its failures, while enabling the reader to empathise with the bravery, patriotism and humanity of its central characters.
If it's worth anything, I carried this book around in my hand baggage from Dublin to Estonia to Finland over the past ten days, and didn't begrudge its bulk once. Read it. You won't regret it.
John Connolly - Author - RAM
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