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AUTHORS FOR A NEW AGE

Jun 072012
 

Book Reviews—

by William T. Hathaway and Paul Carline

Graham Greene, John le Carré, Ludlum, and now Gaither Stewart.
The spy thriller genre veers closer to the truth

The Trojan Spy, by Gaither Stewart, 424 pp
Punto Press, 2012 / Paperback $17.95; electronic format $6.99.

Gaither Stewart’s The Trojan Spy takes the thriller genre an important step forward, advancing it from the work of his predecessors John le Carré and Robert Ludlum. Le Carré and Ludlum rebelled against the conventions of the classic spy thrillers, which assumed that we’re the good guys who are under attack by bad guys so evil that we’re justified in bending the rules to save ourselves from them. In that world, lies, deceit, sabotage, and even murder are sometimes necessary to defend peace, justice, and the American (or Western) Way against (pick one, depending on when the book was written) Nazis, communists, or terrorists. Continue reading »

Jun 032012
 

Select Excerpts From The Trojan Spy
by Gaither Stewart
Punto Press Publishing, 2012

Introduction

The Cold War spy, Anatoly Nikitin, describes the spy as the eternal child who lives a fairytale. He tells his young protégé, the German-Italian, Karl Heinz, that though convictions and ideology count, in the long run the spy’s disease consists of skepticism and cynicism and the good life which replaces ideology. The spy is only troubled by the ambiguity of concepts like loyalty and treason. Treason against whom?

Continue reading »