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A Novel of Dissimulation
by Robert Littell
Book Reviewed by:From the book jacket: In Legends, Littell focuses on the life of
one agent caught in a "wilderness of mirrors" where both remembering and
forgetting his past are deadly options. Martin Odum is a CIA field agent turned
private detective, struggling his way through a labyrinth of past
identities--"legends" in CIA parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante
Pippen, an IRA explosives maven? Or Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War expert?
These men like different foods, speak different languages, have different
skills. Is he suffering from multiple personality disorder, brainwashing, or
simply exhaustion? Can Odum trust the CIA psychiatrist? Or Stella Kastner, a
young Russian woman who engages him to find her brother-in-law so he can give
her sister a divorce. As Odum redeploys his dormant tradecraft skills to
solve Stella's case, he travels the globe battling mortal danger and
psychological disorientation.
Comment: The first Robert Littell novel I read was
The Company, a vast but never sprawling 894 page novel covering 45 years of CIA
history from its founding in 1947 (from the ashes of the OSS) up until 1995.
Legends is set on a smaller scale (running to a mere 380 something pages)
in post-Cold War Russia. Critical opinion is mixed, but generally positive - the negatives are that a few
critics feel that Littell's prose is a little clichéd and some feel that Odum's
search for his real identity is a little overdone.
"No respecter of the classical unities, Littell imbues his tale with the same
split personality of its protagonist, veering from jocose banter to grim
torture, but for readers prepared to follow his lead, he delivers a smart, fun,
strange adventure in the legendary tradition of Odysseus, yet another wily
trickster who boasts to his peril that he is "no man." - Booklist.
"Legends is a rich, funny, perverse, angry, haunting, supremely
entertaining look at our world and our government." - The Washington Post.
This review
first ran in the May 3, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
If you liked Legends, try these:
by Charles Cumming
Published 2009
Six years ago, Alec Milius got out of the spy game after unbearably great personal cost. Yet when a prominent politician goes missing, the urge that drove Milius to originally enter the spy game comes roaring back, and soon Alec finds himself in the midst of another international conspiracy.
by Henry Porter
Published 2007
Set in the weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dr. Rudi Rosenharte, formerly a Stasi foreign agent, is sent to Trieste to rendezvous with his old lover and agent, Annalise Schering. The problem: Rudi knows she’s dead.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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