The Miernik Dossier

The Miernik Dossier

The Miernik Dossier Coronet edition, 1975
Author	Charles McCarry
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Paul Christopher
Genre	Spy novel
Published	1973
Followed by	The Tears of Autumn

The Miernik Dossier, published by the Saturday Review Press in 1973, was the first of seven novels by the American novelist Charles McCarry featuring an American intelligence agent named Paul Christopher. Set in 1959 in Europe and Africa during the days of the Cold War, it is narrated in the form of reports, overheard conversations, and various documents from a multitude of sources of different nationalities, supposedly giving the reader an authentic picture of what an actual intelligence operation might be like. McCarry had previously been an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency for nine years, and the book was hailed for its apparent authenticity and realistic depiction of tradecraft. It received excellent reviews, and instantly established McCarry's reputation as one of the foremost American novelists of espionage. Later books by McCarry, nine more in all, expanded from focusing solely on Christopher into what might be considered a chronicle of the Christopher universe: two novels feature his cousins, the Hubbards, and in many of the other Christopher novels his father, mother, one-time wife, and daughter play important and recurring roles. Also in this universe is a 1988 historical novel, The Bride of the Wilderness, about Christopher's ancestors in 17th-century England, France, and Massachusetts. Like all of McCarry's books, this one displays "an almost Jamesian awareness of [its] European locale, the special authenticity of a loving expatriate writing of an adopted foreign land."

This book introduces Paul Christopher, who will go on to be the main character in another six novels. Document #4 says that he is "An American under deep cover in Geneva", presumably with a cover job in the World Research Organization, a branch of the United Nations; his post, however, is unspecified. In future novels he becomes richly portrayed, with an elaborately detailed family life in pre-War Berlin that plays an important role in some of the books. In The Miernik Dossier, however, he is little more than a nonentity, an intelligent, capable, relatively youthful American agent that his superiors think highly of. Cool and detached, he rarely shows his emotions, even with those who love him. At the end of the book he spends 47 days in Geneva with a beautiful girl who is totally in love with him. One afternoon they make love.

I opened my eyes and saw his face above me. It was the first time we had done it in the daylight. In his eyes I saw the truth. I guess he had drunk too much wine or was too tired to save me from it. Paul did not like to make love to me. I waited until he went to sleep, and then I left. Paul never tried to find me.