The Hargrave deception by E. Howard Hunt

The Hargrave deception Reviews

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  RANGER

  The Hargrave Deception is the story of David Morgan, a cynical ex-CIA agent asked to perform a contract operation escorting a re-defecting rogue agent named Roger Hargrave from Geneva back to Langley. Hargrave was the most serious CIA defection in the history of the agency. He was also an old classmate of Morgan's, the very man who recruited Morgan into the agency. Now, after decades behind the Iron Curtain, Hargrave wants to come back to the US and has asked that the Agency send Morgan to "bring him in out of the cold." The problem is somebody wants Hargrave dead and Morgan ends up caught in the middle. Most of the book consists of Morgan's globe-trotting escape from Hargrave's killers and attempts to find out the truth of the assassination conspiracy with the aid of his former associates in the CIA. The Hargrave Deception is largely considered the best of E. Howard Hunt's post-Watergate novels. Certainly it is a more serious thriller than his later series of Jack Novak books. Hunt was a former CIA agent who testified on numerous occasions before Congress about CIA operations and, most spectacularly, for his post-CIA work as head of President Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate Plumbers. He served time in prison for his role in Watergate. The lead character, David Morgan, is modeled after Hunt. Morgan, like Hunt, was forced to testify before Congress and ended up going to prison for refusing to cooperate with those who were investigating his bosses. This creates the book's weakest elements as Morgan/Hunt relives his Congressional testimonies in a series of flashbacks, all designed to reveal Morgan's ethical superiority over the politicians and career bureaucrats he is convinced sacrificed his career to advance their own agendas. When Morgan does this we know we are hearing from Hunt. By the end of the book, Morgan doesn't know who to trust and the entire CIA is suspect -- especially the weak, professional bureaucrat CIA Director, Dobbs, who seems willing to let anyone die in order to advance his career. Hunt is a good writer, and the plot, minus the pontificating, is quite good. Hunt's CIA background adds to the books realism. But the situations involving Morgan's romantic liaisons are unrealistic. He seems to keep running into old flames or strange women who fall instantly in love with him. Those old, 1980-era "Playboy-hero" moral values, no doubt, but minus the graphic sex (thankfully) that was more common in Hunt's later books. Some younger readers will be perplexed by the depicted ease of international travel, Morgan's ability to purchase a handgun in Europe, or the entire Soviet KGB thing but that's really what the world was like in 1980 -- before 9-11 and the fall of the Berlin wall. Hunt could have and should have become the American version of John Le Carre, a betrayed spy turned author writing about the human cost of espionage. But Le Carre was betrayed by a Soviet Agent named Kim Philby. Hunt felt betrayed by the CIA itself and Congress, and took things more personally. Maybe that's why his later Novak books were about a cynical DEA agent instead of the CIA. Hunt may have meant to leave his CIA past behind for good when he finished The Hargrave Deception. The book's ending certainly leaves you with that feeling.
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  Melissbian

  Occasionally oddly paced with a few incorrect uses of then/than. The editing really detracted from the read. Probably could have undergone a couple more revisions.