Soho Crime, a Soho Press imprint, today releases a reissue of Robert Littell's 1981 espionage classic, THE AMATEUR. What a gift! Littell even catches the tang of some sardonic Russian fiction of that time, as he positions one angry coding analyst, Charlie Heller, as an American geek who find he just has to do something about the murder of his darling fiancée. When Heller discovers that the CIA -- to him, the Company -- knows which three terrorists have killed his sweet and beautiful Sarah Diamond, jeering at her for being a Jew, and knows where those three are, yet plans to do nothing about this, his unexpected emotions lead him to an insistence on action.
Heller's quickly aware that no action will come from his employer. In fact, he's subtly demoted, moved away from the urgent daily coding and deciphering that have been his area. He's been managing communication for an embedded spy located near where the killers now reside. What can he do about all this?
His geeky decision to take matters into his own untrained hands leads him to blackmail his boss into letting him train to go after the murderers. Even the Company's trainer thinks he'll fail -- a gun in the hands of such an amateur is less than fifty percent likely to hit what he fires at. And as a desk jockey, he's not in the physical shape to choose other killing methods, is he?
But Heller's almost father-in-law, Sarah's father, is a Holocaust survivor who already lost his first family, and tells Heller bluntly, "To survive the death of people close to you, you need ritual. ... I spent three years tracking the doctor who sent them to the gas." Mr. Diamond confesses that he strangled that doctor. When Heller says, "it didn't bring them back from the dead," the old man gives him the real point: "It brought me back from the dead!"
Even the Company shrink seems to agree: "From a medical point of view, revenge is very therapeutic." So Heller feels he has all the best reasons to pursue his new plan.
Things get tangled up, of course. The spy he chases isn't who he thought it was. His feelings aren't manageable. He is, indeed, a clumsy amateur, and when the Company tries to control his actions, things get quickly even more dangerous.
Littell's delightful plot takes Heller into highly satisfying changes and actions, and reveals slyly the other meaning of amateur that we've known all along: One who loves.
Pick up a copy for the pleasure of this still great story, for insight into how Littell cut a path for today's espionage authors, and for the foreword by Mick Herron. Totally worth it!
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