Christopher's Ghosts

I picked up a copy of Christopher's Ghosts by Charles McCarry a while ago, and have now read it. During the Cold War, McCarry was an undercover intelligence officer operating in Europe, Africa, and Asia. He draws upon his experience in this dark thriller. The story begins in the harrowing years before the Second World War. Paul Christopher, the son of an American father and a German mother is living in Berlin and, because he refuses to join the Hitler youth is singled out for trouble. Trouble is exactly what he gets. An SS officer, arrogant and deadly, takes a special interest in the Christopher family. As one may imagine, it does not turn out well.


Fast forward twenty years and Paul Christopher is an intelligence officer working for the Americans. After a successful mission in Africa, he is sent to his old haunts. So many people are dead; but not his nemesis. The remainder of the story is a well-crafted tale of remorse, regret, and revenge.


The book feels a little like one of those spy novels, so popular in the 1960's, where the debonair agent takes on the agents of evil. But Paul Christopher is not a cardboard cut-out; his character is real and believable. Deeply wounded by the events of the war-years, yet hiding his grief behind an icily efficient exterior, his exploits are almost cathartic. His bravery, bordering on foolhardiness, is less fueled by anger than by survivor's guilt. Not until the last moments of the novel does one discover that love was an even greater motive.

Perhaps that is true for many of us. Despite the self-proclaimed amorality of our secular world, we are still a pot-pourri of emotions. Guilt and love are never very far beneath the surface. If Victorians suffered from the consequences of suppressed sexuality, perhaps our generation will be known for the suppression of guilt. Some social commentators try to establish a link between laissez faire economics and Victorian morality; perhaps there is a link between a new Elizabethan amorality and laissez faire values in society! Yet the guilt remains. Christopher's Ghosts is, in many respects, a modern parable of a man, and of Western culture, trying to come to terms with its violent past.