The Last Supper
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

A best-seller in Spain, McCarry's latest thriller is in The Da Vinci Code mode but with some significant differences. Set in Italy in 1497, the story is related by Father Agostino Leyre, an inquisitor for the Holy See. Anonymous messages arriving in Rome suggest that something suspicious is going on in Milan, where Leonard da Vinci is finishing The Last Supper. When Leyre arrives in Milan, he is shocked to find blasphemous messages embedded in the artwork: Simon Peter is holding a knife; there's no Eucharist; none of the apostles has a halo. Clearly, Leonardo is incorporating a message into his masterpiece, but what is it? Using various points of view, McCarry dispenses information slowly, and the excitement comes in fits and starts. The primary problems are the lengthy cast of characters and the extensive religious background--especially regarding the Cathar heresy--necessary to understand the story's subtleties. Still, the appetite for religious thrillers continues unabated, and this formidable offering will satisfy more-erudite readers not overly concerned with fast pacing. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2006 Booklist

First published in 1983, this is one of a half dozen of McCarry?s espionage thrillers featuring CIA agent Paul Christopher, an old school spy who operates in a world where clever and vicious communists are unquestionably the villains, and who is handsome, dedicated and never short of compliant women. Dismissing his lover Molly Benson?s feelings of dread, Paul leaves her bed to fly off to 1960s Vietnam. Sure enough, Molly is quickly murdered. Abruptly, the book flashes back to 1926 Germany where Paul?s father, a young American writer, encounters minor Prussian nobility and the woman who will become Paul?s mother. Apolitical until the Nazis arrest his wife in 1939, Paul?s father joins the OSS that becomes the postwar CIA. At this point, fans of this veteran author will settle back to enjoy nearly 400 pages of nasty scheming. Paul?s father spies successfully, but his obsessive efforts to track down his wife lead to Paul?s father?s murder. Following his father?s footsteps into the Cold War ?outfit,? Paul travels the world to counter communist skullduggery, while delivering plenty of his own. He retires (after a 10-year stint in a Chinese prison) but continues to investigate his father?s death. In so doing, he finds the answer as well as the reason for Molly?s murder, leading to a shocking twist that turns his world upside down. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

The third title in Overlook's series of McCarry reprints is a 1983 political thriller and among his best. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A disappointing, oddly disjointed espionage thriller from the gifted author of The Better Angels and The Secret Lovers. The novel's first third deals with Hubbard Christopher, a well-bred American poet/novelist who marries beautiful German baroness Lori in the 1920s, loses her to the Nazis in the '30s (she disappears forever), escapes to America with son Paul. . . and becomes a wartime spy, winding up as chief of US Intelligence in 1946 Berlin; working with crude yet loyal agent Barney Wolkowicz, Hubbard gets involved in a scheme to unmask Soviet double-agents--but is killed when things go awry. The focus then shifts to Hubbard's son Paul, who follows in his father's spy footsteps, joining ""the Outfit,"" with old family friend Wolkowicz (now married to beautiful German girl Ilse) as mentor. While Paul goes to 1950s Indochina, the upper-class-hating Wolkowicz exposes a Communist spy-ring in Washington--fingering, among others, ex-Outfit agent Waddy Jessup, a relative of Paul's (who did Wolkowicz a bad turn when they served together in WW II Asia). Then Paul and Wolkowicz team up in Vienna on a US/UK decoding-machine operation--but it ends miserably when the British agent is revealed as a Soviet spy who's been sleeping with Ilse. (Or was Ilse a Soviet spy to start with?) Next, in the novel's most ungainly lurch, it's suddenly 1963: Paul has resigned from the Outfit, he's on the run from Vietnamese assassins (because he claims that JFK was killed in a Vietnamese vengeance scheme!), his girlfriend Molly gets killed (despite all his efforts to protect her)--and he winds up flying into China by mistake, landing in a Chinese prison for ten years. And then, finally, it's the mid-1970s, Paul is back in post-Watergate Washington, falling in love with young ex-radical Stephanie. . . and learning at last who the real Soviet spy was all along. Admittedly, when these ultimate explanations are made, one realizes why McCarry has strung together a series of ill-developed, seemingly arbitrary episodes. But the revelations are neither surprising nor satisfying enough to justify the loose ends and ragged pacing along the way. And, with a faceless, largely passive hero in Paul, this is perhaps the least absorbing of McCarry's thrillers: solidly written, fitfully suspenseful, but seriously flawed in plot and structure. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A best-seller in Spain, McCarry's latest thriller is in The Da Vinci Code mode but with some significant differences. Set in Italy in 1497, the story is related by Father Agostino Leyre, an inquisitor for the Holy See. Anonymous messages arriving in Rome suggest that something suspicious is going on in Milan, where Leonard da Vinci is finishing The Last Supper. When Leyre arrives in Milan, he is shocked to find blasphemous messages embedded in the artwork: Simon Peter is holding a knife; there's no Eucharist; none of the apostles has a halo. Clearly, Leonardo is incorporating a message into his masterpiece, but what is it? Using various points of view, McCarry dispenses information slowly, and the excitement comes in fits and starts. The primary problems are the lengthy cast of characters and the extensive religious background--especially regarding the Cathar heresy--necessary to understand the story's subtleties. Still, the appetite for religious thrillers continues unabated, and this formidable offering will satisfy more-erudite readers not overly concerned with fast pacing. ((Reviewed March 15, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

The third title in Overlook's series of McCarry reprints is a 1983 political thriller and among his best.

First published in 1983, this is one of a half dozen of McCarry's espionage thrillers featuring CIA agent Paul Christopher, an old school spy who operates in a world where clever and vicious communists are unquestionably the villains, and who is handsome, dedicated and never short of compliant women. Dismissing his lover Molly Benson's feelings of dread, Paul leaves her bed to fly off to 1960s Vietnam. Sure enough, Molly is quickly murdered. Abruptly, the book flashes back to 1926 Germany where Paul's father, a young American writer, encounters minor Prussian nobility and the woman who will become Paul's mother. Apolitical until the Nazis arrest his wife in 1939, Paul's father joins the OSS that becomes the postwar CIA. At this point, fans of this veteran author will settle back to enjoy nearly 400 pages of nasty scheming. Paul's father spies successfully, but his obsessive efforts to track down his wife lead to Paul's father's murder. Following his father's footsteps into the Cold War "outfit," Paul travels the world to counter communist skullduggery, while delivering plenty of his own. He retires (after a 10-year stint in a Chinese prison) but continues to investigate his father's death. In so doing, he finds the answer as well as the reason for Molly's murder, leading to a shocking twist that turns his world upside down. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.