The Miernik dossier

Summary: This is the dazzling first novel, newly reissued, by master spy novelist Charles McCarry, author of "Old boys." McCarry's first book, "The Miernik dossier," originally published in 1973, is a riveting and imaginative tale in which a small group of international agents embark on a car trip in a Cadillac, traveling from Switzerland to the Sudan. Among them are Paul Christopher, an American operative; Kalash el Khatar, the seven-foot-tall Muslim prince; Ilona Bentley, the beautiful half-English, half-Hungarian girlfriend of the British national, Nigel Collins; and Tadeusz Miernik, the shy and bumbling Polish scientist who might be the leader of a terror force that could set the Cold War aflame. Related as a collection of dossier notes written by the five characters, the novel reveals a complicated web in which each spins his or own deception: each is a spider, and each is a spy.