1988: The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

The Author:

Tom Clancy (1947-2013) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  He attended Loyola College.  While there, Clancy joined the ROTC, but was unable to serve due to poor eyesight.  He graduated in 1969, and married Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children.  Throughout the 1970s, he worked as an insurance agent, eventually buying a small firm from his wife's grandfather.  A military history buff, Clancy began writing a novel, The Hunt for Red October, which was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984, to unexpected commercial success.  His second novel, Red Storm Rising (1986), and his third novel, Patriot Games (1987) were the second-bestselling novels of their years of release.  His fourth and fifth novels, The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger, respectively, took the number one spot.  

Since then, Clancy has written or co-written fourteen novels, ten of which have ended up on the annual top ten list.  He has also written or co-written thirteen books of non-fiction.  As well as creating series bearing his name, written by other authors.

Clancy and his wife separated in 1996, divorcing in 1999.  Later in 1999, he married Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whit whom he had one daughter. Clancy died at Johns Hopkins in 2013.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover

Length: 543 pages
Subject/Genre: Cold War Espionage/Military Thriller

The Cardinal of the Kremlin takes place during the Cold War, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. both try to develop laser-based missile defense systems, the success of which would change the balance of power in regards nuclear or ICBM warfare.  Meanwhile, the USSR has invaded Afghanistan, and the CIA is funding a group of Mujaheddin, led by a former teacher known as The Archer.   The CIA supplies weapons in return for information taken from Soviet planes and camps.  

The main body of the narrative details the cat and mouse game between Soviet and U.S. intelligence, especially as regards Colonel Filitov, a high ranking Soviet war hero who has been feeding information to the U.S. for decades under the codename Cardinal (hence the title). Along with lengthy descriptions of the nature and consequence of the defense projects, Clancy spends a lot of time detailing methods of spycraft and political maneuvering.  

In the U.S., the intelligence community, including Clancy's recurring characters Jack Ryan and Mr. Clark, is set into action when Filitov's identity is compromised.  And on the other side of the iron curtain, Gerasimov, the head of the KGB with dreams of ruling the USSR, is trying to consolidate power.

The technology and the procedures of the nations' military and intelligence agencies take priority in the novel, the characters mainly only important in regards to the type of people they represent, and how those people fit into the aforementioned agencies.  The descriptions of military equipment or spycraft techniques are often digressive, but not too much so.  Clancy's understanding of how much information is too much is better than Michener's or Auel's.  Whereas the latter two would (and have) spent pages discussing the nature of the dirt the characters are standing on, Clancy might write just a paragraph, and only then to discuss how it affects the tactical strategy of the terrain.   When reading Michener or Auel, it always seems like what they really wanted to do was write a textbook, and while Clancy does occasionally get like this, it happens far less often.

Overall, though, The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a lot like a high-tech chess match.  Each side is trying to think several moves ahead, but plans constantly shift with the circumstances.  Like a chess match, there are dull moments, the players stopping to fortify their positions, or regroup, and some quite exciting moments when pieces get taken off the board in rapid succession.  But, since I've already set up a chess metaphor and might as well drive it into the ground, unlike chess,  not everything is black and white.

Clancy's novel is a product not only of the cold war, but of the last years of the cold war.  A shift from offensive to defensive warfare, the decreasing power of the KGB, and a power struggle between Western friendly and nationalist government leaders are all important trends throughout the book.  Like le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Soviet officials aren't depicted in the typical red menace villain formula.  Some are ideologues, some are honestly interested in improving the lives of the soviet people, some are power hungry.  Unlike le Carré, Clancy doesn't really give the same treatment to the U.S. intelligence officials, the worst of whom are depicted as misinformed but with good intentions.  (If I had to choose one, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the superior novel.)

Clancy's novel is interesting for another, unintentional reason: historical irony.  Typically, historical irony refers is a specific type of situational irony, that specifically requires the passage of time.  For example, the U.S. supplying the Mujaheddin with weapons to fight our mutual enemy, only for those weapons to be used against the U.S.  Although a form of situational irony, I would argue that it also functions as a form of dramatic irony (the former indicates only that the situation is ironic, whereas the latter refers to how one reads a text with knowledge the characters don't have).  Clancy portrays the Mujaheddin as noble freedom fighters protecting their country from enemy invaders.  That the Mujaheddin developed into the Taliban is something that Clancy couldn't have known, and unintentionally provides the counter-balance between U.S. and Soviet tactics in the close days of the Cold War.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin's legacy is less prestigious than other Clancy novels.  No movie was made, but it is the first book on my list to get a video game adaptation.  It was a resource management game released for the Amiga in 1990.

Title Screen

The Cardinal of the Kremlin was an entertaining read.  If you're interested in military/spy thrillers, well, you've probably already read a bunch of Clancy, but if you haven't give this one a look.  If it's not a genre you enjoy, you probably won't like this one (although I do recommend The Spy Who Came in from the Cold).

Bestsellers of 1988:

1. The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

2. The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon

3. Zoya by Danielle Steele

4. The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

5. Alaska by James Michener

6. Till We Meet Again by Judith Krantz

7. The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

8. To Be the Best by Barbara Taylor Bradford

9. One by Richard Bach

10. Mitla Pass by Leon Uris

Also Published in 1988:

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo 

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Libra by Don DeLillo

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Sources:

Clancy, Tom. The Cardinal of the Kremlin. New York: Putnam, 1988. Print.

"The Cardinal of the Kremlin." VideoGameGeek. BoardGameGeek, LLC. Web.

"Tom Clancy." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web. 

1964: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

The Author:

John le Carré (1931-  ) is the pseudonym of David Cornwell.  He was born in Poole, Dorset, England.  His mother abandoned the family when he was five years old.  His father had a troubled relationship with the law, and was connected to organized crime.

His family was financially volatile, his father making large sums of money and losing it, time after time.  In 1948, le Carré attended the University of Bern, Switzerland, to study foreign languages.  In 1950 he joined the British Army's Intelligence Corps before returning to England in 1952.  He married Alison Sharp in 1954.  It is around this point that le Carré joined MI5.  In 1960, he transferred from MI5 to MI6 (MI5 is the domestic intelligence agency, MI6 is the international.  The rough U.S. equivalent would be the NSA and the CIA). Le Carré ran operations within the intelligence community, led interrogations and tapped communications.  He published his first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962) under a pseudonym due to MI6 regulations.  His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) was an international bestseller and won le Carré the Somerset Maugham Award for young British writers.

Le Carré left MI6 in 1964 after his identity was compromised, and became a full time writer.  He divorced Sharp in 1971 and married Valérie Eusatce in 1972.  He had eight more appearances on the annual bestsellers list including 1974's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Le Carré and his wife currently live in St. Buryan, Cornwall, U.K.


The Book:

Length: 256 pages

Subject/Genre: Cold War/Espionage

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is technically the third book in a series of interconnected stories, but reading the previous two novels is not necessary to understanding this one (I didn't even realize it was a sequel until after I'd finished reading it).  The novel follows Alec Leamas, a middle-aged spy in command of East German espionage.  The novel starts with him waiting at the border for an East German asset to cross into safe territory.  Every other asset Leamas had has been murdered.

The rest of the novel focuses on Leamas as he pretends to defect to East Germany and seeks to bring down the head of East Germany's secret police, Hans-Dieter Mundt while trying to keep safe the innocent woman who's gotten mixed up in it all.

I've never been a huge fan of the espionage genre, but I really enjoyed The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.  While the major focus in on the unfolding mystery of secret informants and obscure instructions, le Carré creates a world where moral ambiguity is the status quo, and anything that gets the desired results is accepted as a good thing by those in charge, regardless of the damage it does to any operatives or citizens.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold met with (and still receives) considerable critical acclaim.  Publishers Weekly has listed it as the best spy novel and TIME Magazine included it in their list of the 100 best novels since 1923.  A film version starring Richard Burton was released in 1965.

If you like espionage novels, or if you don't like espionage novels but want to be won over, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a good choice.




Bestsellers of 1964:

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
2. Candy  by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
3. Herzog by Saul Bellow  
4. Armageddon by Leon Uris
5. The Man by Irving Wallace
6. The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
7. The Martyred by Richard E. Kim
8. You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
9. This Rough Magic by Mary Stweart
10. Convention by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Baily II

Also Published in 1964:

Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
William Golding - The Spire

Sources:

Le Carré, John. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. New York, Coward-McCann Inc, 1963.
        Print.

1963: The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West

The Author:

Morris West (1916-1999) was born near Melbourne, Australia.  He received a B.A. from the University of Melbourne in 1937, and taught modern languages and mathematics in New South Wales and Tasmania.  He spent twelve years studying with the Christian Brother Order, studying for the priesthood, but left in 1941. West gained notoriety as a director with Australasian Radio Productions, where he worked from 1943-53. He left Australia in 1955, taking up residence in numerous countries on multiple continents.

His first book, Moon in My Pocket, was published under the pseudonym Julian Morris in 1945.  His next book was published in 1956.  Between 1956 and 1959, he published eight books, under his own name and the pseudonym Michael East.  The most famous of these, at the time, was 1959's The Devil's Advocate, which he wrote after spending six months as the Daily Mail's Vatican correspondent.  The book received critical and commercial success.  The next novel published under his own name, Daughter of Silence, was the #8 bestselling novel in the U.S. for 1961.  The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) was his biggest commercial success.  He appears on the top ten annual bestsellers list twice more, in 1965 for The Ambassador and in 1968 for The Tower of Babel.  

The Book:

Length: 374 pages

Subject/Genre: Catholicism, World Politics/Political Thriller

"The pope is dead."  Now the cardinals must elect a new pope, and the unlikely electee is the new Ukranian cardinal, Kiril, now Kiril I, who spent 17 years in a Siberian prison camp and only escaped to the West three days before the election.  Or was he released?  Switching between an omniscient third person narration and excerpts from the new pope's secret diary, we are given a picture of a man who, within the course of a year, went from a prisoner to a pontiff (although Kiril isn't sure there's much of a difference).  Now Kamanev, the man who tortured and tried to destroy him (and is rumored to have orchestrated his release), is leader of the Soviet Union, and it's up to Kiril to try to prevent a war between U.S. and the U.S.S.R.    This takes place among a few subplots, the political intrigue of the Vatican, and frequent pontificating on faith, goodness, etc.

This is far from the first book about priests on my list.  The bestselling novels of 1913, 1927, 1935, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1950, 1952, and 1953 have been about priests, preachers, and prophets and saints.  The Shoes of the Fisherman happens to be the meeting point between the religious trend pre-1960s, and the political thrillers/conspiracy novels to come (e.g. le Carré, Ludlum, Clancy, Brown).  Of the lot Elmer Gantry (Sinclair Lewis, 1927) is my favorite.  Shoes is tied for second for my favorite of the priest novels, alongside Cronin's The Keys of the Kingdom (1941).  While religion is obviously a huge part of the plot and character development, unlike most of the other priest novels, it's not just preaching to the choir (pun intended).   West creates a pope who is unsure of himself, who is a complex character with serious doubts and insecurities: he creates a human character, not an archetype or a caricature.  Many of the lead priest characters are two dimensional, or are given flaws that are entirely affected, flaws that are only one small life-lesson from being completely vanquished.

The novel was adapted for the screen in 1968, starring Anthony Quinn as Pope Kiril I and Laurence Olivier as Kamanev.

I apologize for the brevity of this week's review.  A lot of coursework is piling up and I have to get around to that, too (and maybe have a social life?).  Anyway, The Shoes of the Fisherman is a good political intrigue novel, and a good priest novel.  If either or both of those interest you, this would be a good choice.

Bestsellers of 1963:

1. The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
2. The Group by Mary McCarthy
3. Raise Hight the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
4. Caravans by James Michener
5. Elizabeth Appleton by John O'Hara
6. Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell
7. City of Night by John Rechy
8. The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier
9. The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
10. The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden


Also published in 1963:

Pierre Boulle - The Planet of the Apes
Julio Cortázar - Hopscotch
John Fowles - The Collector
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Thomas Pynchon - V.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
Charles Webb - The Graduate

Sources:

"Morris L(anglo) West." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature 
     Resource Center. Web.

West, Morris. The Shoes of the Fisherman. New York: William Morrow & Co, 1963. Print.

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

The Author:

Allen Drury (1918-1998) was born in Houston, but grew up in Porterville, in Tulare County in central California.  He was descended multiple members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, most notably Edmund Rice, who immigrated to the colony in 1638.

In 1939, Drury graduated from Stanford and began working as a reporter from the Tulare Bee where he received recognition for his editorial writing, and then spent a year working for the Bakersfield Californian.  He enlisted in the Army in 1942.  He was no longer in the army in 1943. (I have been unable to find details of his military service.  With the exception of some details surrounding his writing career, I have been unable to find any information about Drury not available on his Wikipedia page.)  He worked for United Press International, as a member of the U.S. Senate's staff, from 1943-1945, became editor of Pathfinder magazine in 1947, then joined the Washington Evening Star in 1953, The New York Times from 1954-1959, and finally Reader's Digest from '59-62.

His first and most successful novel was Advise and Consent, published in 1959.  For this, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1960.  Advise and Consent spawned five sequels.  Drury published a handful of non-fiction and twenty novels, writing until his death from cardiac arrest in 1998.

The Book:

Length: 616 pages
Subject/Genre: Cold War, U.S. Politics/Political thriller

Advise and Consent takes its name from the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress must offer advice and consent to presidential nominations for high ranking officials.  In the case of the novel, this means Bob Leffingwell, a liberal who is popular with the public but controversial within Washington.  Robert Munson, Senate Majority Leader, is tasked by the president to secure enough votes for Leffingwell's confirmation.

Advise and Consent is reflective of the Cold War era, and its political stance is that we'll either destroy the soviets or be destroyed by them.  The novel has a large cast of characters, many of whom were based off of real politicians.  The confirmation of Leffingwell gets problematic, as claims that he was secretly a Communist are brought to the Senate (possibly based on Alger Hiss), and the President starts to play dirty, leading to blackmail and suicide (likely based on Lester Hunt).  The story is largely a matter of dialogue, and most of the conflict is interpersonal, with the various characters each having their own agendas and idiosyncracies.  The story drags at some points, but otherwise is a great example of its genre.

In 1960, Advise and Consent won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making it the last book on this list to have done so.  Advise and Consent has five sequels, A Shade of Difference (1962), Capable of Honor (1966), Preserve and Protect (1968), Come Nineveh, Come Tyre (1973), and The Promise of Joy (1975).  An interesting note is that the last two are actually alternate sequels to Preserve and Protect, which ends with a cliffhanger.  Come Nineveh, Come Tyre and The Promise of Joy each cover the same time period, but are based on different outcomes of the cliffhanger in the preceding novel.  

Advise and Consent was a book-of-the-month club selection, and spawned a film adaptation in 1962 starring Henry Fonda.

Advise and Consent is an excellent political thriller, but I don't think it transcends the genre.  If you are looking to read a political thriller, Advise and Consent is definitely a good choice (although it seems to no longer be in print).

Bestselling Novels of 1960:
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
Hawaii by James Michener
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Chapman Report by Irving Wallace
Ourselves to Know by John O'Hara
The Constant Image by Marcia Davenport
The Lovely Ambition by Mary Ellen Chase
The Listener by Taylor Caldwell
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
Sermons and Soda-Water by John O'Hara

Also published in 1960:
John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Dr. Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
John Updike - Rabbit, Run

Sources:

"Allen (Stuart) Drury." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003.  Literature 
     Resource Center. Web.

Drury, Allen. Advise and Consent. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959. Print.