{"id":6326,"date":"2017-01-12T08:28:21","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6326"},"modified":"2017-01-12T08:28:21","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:28:21","slug":"the-shanghai-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6326","title":{"rendered":"****The Shanghai Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shanghai,

photo: Fabrizio Maestroni, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Charles McCarry \u2013 This Shanghai-U.S. East Coast-based spy thriller is reminiscent of the early works of John le Carr\u00e9, where the question always is, Whom can you trust? And the answer: no one. At least that\u2019s how the unnamed narrator, a new CIA recruit, chooses to operate. Paranoia 101. Throughout, it\u2019s McCarry\u2019s wry observations of characters and their situations that make the reading such a pleasure.<\/p>\n

Undocumented CIA agents, like the narrator,<\/p>\n

. . . never carry official ID. This absence of proof that they\u2019re up to no good is their protection. Otherwise, they are warned, they\u2019re on their own. If they get themselves into trouble, they\u2019ll get no help. If they do well, they\u2019ll get no thanks. That formula is, of course, catnip to romantics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McCarry gives his protagonist a deceptive openness and surface sociability. A Chinese languages major in college, he\u2019s been sent to Shanghai to improve his language skills and cultural acumen and to keep a lookout for potential Agency recruits.<\/p>\n

Early in his stay, a beautiful young woman crashes her bike into his, he buys her an expensive replacement, and before long, they\u2019re lovers. It\u2019s a fun way to learn the language not generally endorsed by Berlitz. From the beginning, he assumes she\u2019d been sent by the Guoanbu, the Chinese intelligence service. Other than her name, Mei, he never asks her any questions about her background\u2014what would be the point?\u2014except to learn she was an exchange student in Massachusetts, which accounts for her American English. Nor does she ask such questions of him\u2014ditto. Plus, he figures she already knows.<\/p>\n

Through Mei, he meets wealthy, upwardly mobile young Chinese, disdainful of their stodgy Communist parents. Through one of them, he meets a prominent Chinese CEO and receives an employment offer he suspects is a feeler from Guoanbu. Such a placement could be invaluable to the CIA, if highly risky to him.<\/p>\n

McCarry creates a number of entertaining secondary characters, especially lusty Mei, the hot-and-cold Chinese spy Lin Ming, and his mother\u2019s former crack-addict cook, Magdalena. Are any of them what and who they seem? Then there\u2019s his handler, the eccentric CIA director of counter-intelligence Luther Burbank (to the surprise of horticulturalists everywhere), who advises him take the job.<\/p>\n

Burbank is the only man at the Agency who knows what he\u2019s up to, and they talk only rarely. When they do, Burbank counsels that becoming a an effective espionage agent and undermining Guoanbu, will be a long game, vulnerable to exposure at every turn. They have to be content to wait for the payoff. He does take the job and, from there, life gets complicated.<\/p>\n

McCarry\u2019s writing is smooth and literary, and one of my favorite authors, Alan Furst, calls him \u201ca master of intelligent, literate spy fiction.\u201d If you like an old-fashioned spy story dependent more on agents\u2019 wits than electronic wizardry and body count, you may enjoy this one too.
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