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The Once and Future Spy: A Novel of Obsession
Extraordinarily inventive, breathtakingly imaginative, and relentlessly gripping, The Once and Future Spy is easy to read, and hard to put down.
By national best-selling author, Robert Littell, whose most recent novel The Company received rave reviews across the nation, The Once and Future Spy is finally back in print. This is Littell at the top of his form, constructing a tale of espionage and counterespionage revealing the dirty tricks and dangerous secrets about the subjects he knows intimately the CIA and American history, past and present. Littell proves beyond all doubt that he is a storyteller of inimitable caliber. As Stephen Coonts put it, “Eric Ambler invented the modern spy novel. Robert Littell perfected it. The Once and Future Spy is a classic spy story.” At the center of Littell’s plot is an elite plan, so secret and so dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within CIA headquarters. There is virtually no paper trail but, somehow, the plan has sprung a leak. The plotters must urgently trace it or face deadly consequences. Meanwhile, at work elsewhere on another highly sensitive project for "the Company" is an operative known as “the Weeder” a man obsessed with American history and one of its heroes. When the Weeder's and Washington's clandestine worlds collide, the present faces the past and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be believed?
By national best-selling author, Robert Littell, whose most recent novel The Company received rave reviews across the nation, The Once and Future Spy is finally back in print. This is Littell at the top of his form, constructing a tale of espionage and counterespionage revealing the dirty tricks and dangerous secrets about the subjects he knows intimately the CIA and American history, past and present. Littell proves beyond all doubt that he is a storyteller of inimitable caliber. As Stephen Coonts put it, “Eric Ambler invented the modern spy novel. Robert Littell perfected it. The Once and Future Spy is a classic spy story.” At the center of Littell’s plot is an elite plan, so secret and so dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within CIA headquarters. There is virtually no paper trail but, somehow, the plan has sprung a leak. The plotters must urgently trace it or face deadly consequences. Meanwhile, at work elsewhere on another highly sensitive project for "the Company" is an operative known as “the Weeder” a man obsessed with American history and one of its heroes. When the Weeder's and Washington's clandestine worlds collide, the present faces the past and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be believed?
308 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 1990
59 people are currently reading
582 people want to read
About the author
Robert Littell
41 books424 followersAn American author residing in France. He specializes in spy novels that often concern the CIA and the Soviet Union. He became a journalist and worked many years for Newsweek during the Cold War. He's also an amateur mountain climber and is the father of award-winning novelist Jonathan Littell.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
May 12, 2008
I think Littell fancies himself a John le Carre', which he is not. The characters are cartoonish and the settings sparse. His plot is interesting, and in this book, his description of Nathan Hale's spy mission during the revolution was better than the campish main narrative.
August 28, 2019
I really liked this book right up until the final, unnecessary twist, which completely ruined the plot. I was so angry I threw the book across the room.
November 14, 2018
Littell is one of my favorite authors. I've come to expect a great story from him. This was not a great story, barely meh.
March 27, 2020
This book kept me guessing right up through the end, something most unusual in any book, even spy novels. Is Wanamaker the good guy or the bad guy? Is the Weeder a bad guy or a good guy? Is Snow an innocent bystander or is she complicit? Is the Admiral complicit or is he an innocent bystander? And is everyone, or even anyone, a patriot? In roles that switch and change, your reader loyalties change back and forth as the tale unfolds. And intertwined is the historical story from the U.S. Revolutionary War and the Weeder's "my man Nate", a supposed ancestor and real historical figure. Is Nate's tale real or imagined and is his relation to the Weeder real or imagined. Is the Weeder rational or delusional? And what about Wanamaker, sane or crazy?
Beginning the story with Nate, I did get a bit confused sometimes whether we were with Wanamaker, Snow, and the Weeder in the present time or with Nate in the past. The tactic actually increases tension within the novel as a whole. Well done, Mr. Littell, well done
Beginning the story with Nate, I did get a bit confused sometimes whether we were with Wanamaker, Snow, and the Weeder in the present time or with Nate in the past. The tactic actually increases tension within the novel as a whole. Well done, Mr. Littell, well done
March 21, 2019
Any lover of the spy novel will find in this book a gem of the genre. Littell's knowledge of the spy's shadow world, especially of The Company (CIA), is evident throughout this cleverly plotted, well written, intriguing novel. The characters, unusual as they may be to the average reader, come across as real, their adventures credible. An added feature is that Littell writes with humor and a sense of urgency that leaves one ready to read into the night to follow the plot.
Having arrived at the end, however, I felt somehow tricked by characters and events that I took at face value but were, in the author's mind, evidence of the many facets of "truth." It is almost as if truth is in the eye of the reader. I nonetheless remain entranced and intrigued by this novel, the plot of which is impossible to summarize without including spoilers.
In general, it is the story of a "CIA plot" contrived by one man and his team and unraveled by a longtime enemy of his. Adding interest is the plot-spoiler's obsession with the past, specifically a character with whom he closely identifies, thereby leading the reader into the gripping story of America's Revolutionary War spy and its "re-enactment" in the present in the mind of the spoiler character whose thoughts and actions the author feeds into by repeating phrases from the past story into the present story
The plot is one of twists and turns, the characters full of amusing idiosyncracies, and the action compelling--all in all a five star read.
Having arrived at the end, however, I felt somehow tricked by characters and events that I took at face value but were, in the author's mind, evidence of the many facets of "truth." It is almost as if truth is in the eye of the reader. I nonetheless remain entranced and intrigued by this novel, the plot of which is impossible to summarize without including spoilers.
In general, it is the story of a "CIA plot" contrived by one man and his team and unraveled by a longtime enemy of his. Adding interest is the plot-spoiler's obsession with the past, specifically a character with whom he closely identifies, thereby leading the reader into the gripping story of America's Revolutionary War spy and its "re-enactment" in the present in the mind of the spoiler character whose thoughts and actions the author feeds into by repeating phrases from the past story into the present story
The plot is one of twists and turns, the characters full of amusing idiosyncracies, and the action compelling--all in all a five star read.
October 22, 2013
This is an odd, but very good, story. Two stories, really. The first concerns a man who has stumbled upon a plot by an American intelligence service, which for the sake of your reading, I won't describe. Neither the service, nor the plot. Suffice it to say that the service is not what you will think it is, and the plot is not what you may anticipate it to be. Like much of Littell's work, you won't have many real answers until you are well into the narrative. Intertwined in this first tale, is, of all things, a perhaps apocryphal (and perhaps not) telling of part of Nathan Hale's role in the Revolutionary War. Again, it will take some reading before that or anything else makes any real sense. However, both narratives move crisply and are inventive without being completely ludicrous. While I am describing much less than most reviewers of this book, and doing so purposely because this is a book best during the first read and without any spoilers (I read it previously, when it first came out, I leave you with this: At the end of the book there are two or three chapters, each contradicting the one before it. What is the real truth this book describes? Well, to quote a phrase used by two of the characters on more than one occasion: "What truth? Whose truth?"
This is not Littell at his best, but it is very good.
This is not Littell at his best, but it is very good.
July 5, 2016
Deeply, deeply odd book. A spy thriller, I suppose, but it's really a psychological journey full of grotesques, and it's left very ambiguous at the end how much of it is actually true and how much isn't. Worth reading, although you may come away with a sense of frustrated anticlimax at not knowing what the hell is actually true. Unreliable narrators are meant to reveal the unreliable bits at the end; that's the twist.
Also discovered that Littell's son is the Jonathan Littell who wrote terrible sci-fi novel Bad Voltage!
Read
August 20, 2022Not even the beloved sound of Scott Brick’s narration could save this for me. DNF’ed at 35% bc I could not handle any more flashbacks to Nate the revolutionary war dingus. (August 2022)
November 15, 2010
It's been hit or miss for me with Littell's books. I loved The Company, didn't even finish The Debriefing, and liked, but didn't love, this one, The Once and Future Spy.
In terms of writing, Littell shines. I really like the way he tells a story (for the most part), introducing vivid and interesting characters who have real and believable flaws and who, of course, have secrets of their own they're desperate to keep hidden.
The hero of The Once and Future Spy is a man named Silas Sibley, known as the Weeder because of his talent for weeding through documents to find information. As a prank and out of revenge for a college-era wrong, he eavesdrops on a man named Wanamaker, the man in charge of a secret group planning to detonate an atom bomb inside an Iranian university in order to bring the Iranians to heel. The Weeder discovers this plot, and believing himself a patriot like his ancestor Nathan Hale - the Revolutionary War spy of "I regret I have but one life to give for my country" fame - sets out to thwart Wanamaker's plans.
Of course, Wanamaker takes action when he discovers the leak and brings in a man named Admiral Toothacher, a fastidious and brilliant man with a secret, to find out who it is. Which he does. Which then leads to a lot more trouble than any of them bargained for.
A large portion of the book is devoted to the Weeder's research. He's writing an account of the missing week between when Nathan Hale set off as a spy at General Washington's request and when he was captured by the British and subsequently hanged. At first glance, the narrative seems out of place, but the more we learn about the Weeder, the more we see the parallels. Like his ancestor, the Weeder believes in country and duty above all else, which leads him down the path he eventually travels, his own actions very closely mimicking Hale's own, as put forth in the Weeder's narrative. Whether he eventually suffers the same fate as Hale is left open-ended, because just when you think the Weeder's won, there's another wrench thrown into the mix.
As a history buff, I really enjoyed the bits about Nathan Hale, even if they weren't true. As a fan of spy novels, I really enjoyed the tightly woven, complex plot. There were parts that I thought were a little over the top (the three assassination attempts on the Weeder, for instance) and I never quite warmed to the character of Snow despite her necessity to the plot. Not only was she the equivalent of the Molly Davis character in the Weeder's Hale narrative (yet another parallel), she was also instrumental in the final events of the book. I would have liked to know more about her.
All in all, a good quick read with a driving plot and solid writing. Littell is definitely high on the list of good spy fiction writers.
In terms of writing, Littell shines. I really like the way he tells a story (for the most part), introducing vivid and interesting characters who have real and believable flaws and who, of course, have secrets of their own they're desperate to keep hidden.
The hero of The Once and Future Spy is a man named Silas Sibley, known as the Weeder because of his talent for weeding through documents to find information. As a prank and out of revenge for a college-era wrong, he eavesdrops on a man named Wanamaker, the man in charge of a secret group planning to detonate an atom bomb inside an Iranian university in order to bring the Iranians to heel. The Weeder discovers this plot, and believing himself a patriot like his ancestor Nathan Hale - the Revolutionary War spy of "I regret I have but one life to give for my country" fame - sets out to thwart Wanamaker's plans.
Of course, Wanamaker takes action when he discovers the leak and brings in a man named Admiral Toothacher, a fastidious and brilliant man with a secret, to find out who it is. Which he does. Which then leads to a lot more trouble than any of them bargained for.
A large portion of the book is devoted to the Weeder's research. He's writing an account of the missing week between when Nathan Hale set off as a spy at General Washington's request and when he was captured by the British and subsequently hanged. At first glance, the narrative seems out of place, but the more we learn about the Weeder, the more we see the parallels. Like his ancestor, the Weeder believes in country and duty above all else, which leads him down the path he eventually travels, his own actions very closely mimicking Hale's own, as put forth in the Weeder's narrative. Whether he eventually suffers the same fate as Hale is left open-ended, because just when you think the Weeder's won, there's another wrench thrown into the mix.
As a history buff, I really enjoyed the bits about Nathan Hale, even if they weren't true. As a fan of spy novels, I really enjoyed the tightly woven, complex plot. There were parts that I thought were a little over the top (the three assassination attempts on the Weeder, for instance) and I never quite warmed to the character of Snow despite her necessity to the plot. Not only was she the equivalent of the Molly Davis character in the Weeder's Hale narrative (yet another parallel), she was also instrumental in the final events of the book. I would have liked to know more about her.
All in all, a good quick read with a driving plot and solid writing. Littell is definitely high on the list of good spy fiction writers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 4, 2015
An interesting book, a spy book with an intricate plot, sometimes hard to follow or to keep track of the main story line.
Many flashbacks in time are at times confusing as to where the story leads, but if you focus you'll manage to keep up.
Noting impressive in my humble opinion, but I am comparing even if I don't particularly want to, with some other masters of this style, so I couldn't quite find the "wow factor".
It is however a decent book, somewhat entertaining and it may worth your time if you enjoy this style.
Many flashbacks in time are at times confusing as to where the story leads, but if you focus you'll manage to keep up.
Noting impressive in my humble opinion, but I am comparing even if I don't particularly want to, with some other masters of this style, so I couldn't quite find the "wow factor".
It is however a decent book, somewhat entertaining and it may worth your time if you enjoy this style.
November 10, 2018
A quick-paced spy thriller that manages to subvert some of the stereotypes while still delivering on the cloak and dagger a reader wants. Also, surprisingly, an exploration of the mythology of Nathan Hale, arguably America’s first spy. Recommended.
Read
July 19, 2007despite rave reviews i didn't care for this book. a double story of nathan hale and a contemporary spy.
January 17, 2014
I 've always liked everything I've read by Littell, but this one didn't work.
October 5, 2021
J'écris à chaud, je viens à peine de refermer le livre. Et je suis... Perplexe. J'avais lu quelques commentaires sur le twist final et effectivement, il me laisse sur ma faim, incapable de décider ce qui est vrai et ce qui ne l'est pas. Où est l'illusion, où est la vérité ?
En principe, je suis du genre à ne pas aimer ce genre de fin, qui laisse un goût un peu inabouti mais ici, elle sonne presque juste, car tout le livre ne tourne-t-il pas autour de ce thème récurrent ? "la vérité de qui, la vérité de quoi ?"
La vérité qu'on voudrait absolue est finalement un concept malléable et relatif, qui dépend des informations dont on dispose, a fortiori quand on se trouve dans les zones grises du renseignement et du secret d'état.
Intelligent donc, surprenant et distrayant.
En principe, je suis du genre à ne pas aimer ce genre de fin, qui laisse un goût un peu inabouti mais ici, elle sonne presque juste, car tout le livre ne tourne-t-il pas autour de ce thème récurrent ? "la vérité de qui, la vérité de quoi ?"
La vérité qu'on voudrait absolue est finalement un concept malléable et relatif, qui dépend des informations dont on dispose, a fortiori quand on se trouve dans les zones grises du renseignement et du secret d'état.
Intelligent donc, surprenant et distrayant.
January 15, 2023
De titel dekt de lading niet. Hoewel er een zekere spanning in het verhaal zit, wordt die onderbroken door een semi-geschiedkundig geschrift dat een van de personages zogezegd verzint en opschrijft. De afloop van het verhaal laat te wensen over. Ik ben niet van plan nog andere boeken van deze schrijver te lezen.
June 20, 2025
4.5 stars
As with The Amateur , the book felt a little slow at the start. After a bit, though, it got quite good, also like The Amateur.
(My review of The Amateur. Nothing special, but just in case you're curious.)
As with The Amateur , the book felt a little slow at the start. After a bit, though, it got quite good, also like The Amateur.
(My review of The Amateur. Nothing special, but just in case you're curious.)
July 11, 2017
it took me forever to read this book just because of busy-ness, so my review is somewhat slanted by that.
i found the writing clever, the author has a dry sense of humor that makes you chuckle now and then.
The story was good, but i didn't find it very compelling.
i found the writing clever, the author has a dry sense of humor that makes you chuckle now and then.
The story was good, but i didn't find it very compelling.
January 25, 2019
It wasn't terrible, it wasn't great. That being said, I'm glad I was doing other things while listening to this because otherwise I might be mad about the loss of time. And based on this reaction, I probably won't be in a hurry to read or listen to anything else by the author.
September 21, 2022
A decent classical spy thriller with a hint of postmodernism on the last pages: is everything real, or it's just illusions of a mentally ill CIA agent? Also, I, being a history nerd, enjoyed a parallel plot about events of the American Revolution.
April 28, 2025
I listened to this book. I don’t think it was a good choice to listen to, as I felt some confusion. If I had actually read the book, the plot might have been more engaging. The parallel with the Nathan Hale story was very interesting. I wasn’t a big fan of the ending.
October 29, 2017
A page turner with twists right up to the end. One of the better spy writers.
July 7, 2018
This one didn't work for me. Few "novels of obsession," as he refers to it on the cover, rarely do. A little farfetched, perhaps he's showing off his versatility as a writer.
March 27, 2020
This book is an excellent thriller, that also covers some history that was new to me. The ending left me a little stumped, though
May 31, 2020
If you like spy novels Littell can flat write them. This one twists and turns until you want to scream at him.
But it definitely satisfies the craving.
But it definitely satisfies the craving.
June 15, 2022
7.5/10 - Enjoyed this one, although the ending confused the hell out of me. Absurdist espionage at its finest.
January 27, 2024
I see his point, but it’s not a point you should drag readers across 293 pages in order to make.
January 29, 2024
Which version of the truth will you believe?
February 4, 2025
Fun, easy read. Littell always writes fun books but this one is a bit of a mind-bender. Nice blend of historical fiction and espionage with plenty of twists.
April 19, 2025
A very unusual spy novel. But what else do you expect from a spy novel?
March 10, 2015
A quick read.
Positives: good character descriptions for some people. I had a good vision of a few people in the book
Negatives: not a very deep plot or development. There was definitely a protagonist and antagonist, but they just didn't get to the point where I felt I knew them. There was no passion, no suspense, no moments of true spy novel espionage. The people just floated around through the chapters and did things that the author thought he laid the foundation for....but didn't.
It was a lackluster novel at best, a silly attempt at historical psychological thriller at worst.
If you're in to spy novels, skip it. There's no good spy stuff. If you're in to historical novels, skip it. The history sections are elementary and pointless.
Read this if its the only thing to grab before a long airplane trip.
Positives: good character descriptions for some people. I had a good vision of a few people in the book
Negatives: not a very deep plot or development. There was definitely a protagonist and antagonist, but they just didn't get to the point where I felt I knew them. There was no passion, no suspense, no moments of true spy novel espionage. The people just floated around through the chapters and did things that the author thought he laid the foundation for....but didn't.
It was a lackluster novel at best, a silly attempt at historical psychological thriller at worst.
If you're in to spy novels, skip it. There's no good spy stuff. If you're in to historical novels, skip it. The history sections are elementary and pointless.
Read this if its the only thing to grab before a long airplane trip.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews