Old Boys: none - Hardcover

Charles McCarry is considered by many to be a master of spy fiction

In his magnificent new novel - his first for almost a decade - McCarry returns to the world of Paul Christopher, the crack intelligence agent who is as skilled at choosing a fine wine as he is at tradecraft, at once elegant and dangerous, sophisticated and rough-and-ready. As the novel opens, Christopher, ageing but fit, is dining with his cousin Horace, also an ex-agent. The delicious dinner is uneventful. A day later Christopher has vanished. The months pass; peculiarly, his ashes are delivered by a Chinese official to the American consulate in Beijing. A memorial service is held in Washington.

But Horace is not convinced that Christopher is dead and, enlisting the support of four other retired colleagues, he gets the Old Boys back in the game. Beginning with a photo of a woman's hand holding a centuries- old scroll, once in the possession of the Nazis and now sought by the American government as well as Muslim extremists, Horace Christopher and the Old Boys travel the globe. Harrassed by American intelligence, hunted by terroists, their search takes them from Xinjiang to Brazil, from Rome to Tel Aviv, Budapest to Moscow. Their mission: to find Paul Christopher and the unspeakably dangerous truth.