An Honorable Man, by Paul Vidich

 

An Honorable Man, by Paul Vidich

 

An Honorable Man is set in the early, turbulent 1950’s in American.  World War II was over, but the cold war had just begun.  And with the cold war came internecine skirmishes between the tried and true Federal Bureau of Investigation and the new kid on the intelligence block, the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that had its roots in World War II and the Office of Strategic Services.

 

Add to that what has become known as The Red Scare, when Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin alleged that the U.S. was infested with Soviet Agents, throughout the government and the nation, and waves of conflict washed over every government agency and every government employee.

 

You may see tangential elements in our own time.  Substitute any number of today’s angry labels for ‘communist’ in the 1950s.  Pick your own metaphor, but The Red Scare, like so many other sloppy paintings was like putting on lipstick with a wet mop. Yes, there were communists in government, but the splatter fell on the good and the bad and the innocent.

 

Have you heard of The House Un-American Activities Committee?  Think of the 1950’s so-called blacklist in Hollywood.

 

The whole political time carried the stench of an open sewer, and yet intelligence activity prodded on, with the CIA and the Soviet counterpart doing their best to outsmart each other.  In the U.S. there were scandals and spies and trials.  On the Soviet side there were roundups and executions.

 

Paul Vidich takes the reader into the messy past, with characters on each side and devoted to each agency, with point and counter point.

 

And in this novel there are spies and counterspies and conspiracies and counter conspiracies, but all focused on the human element, the decisions and indecisions and personal angst, and person tragedies

 

Some authors tell a story and others, the very best ones, make you live a story.  It’s what has been said many times, that a good novelist turns poetry into prose.  Vidich lives up to that high standard, with short, but effective descriptions that bring moods and situations into focus.

 

Some examples:

 

“The monastic cell suited his suffering and after he’d returned divorced from Vienna and his life was turned upside down.    He’d moved in on a temporary basis, but one month became three years with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve.”

 

 

“I need to speak to you,” Beth said, urgently, “Can I come in?”

 

There were hints of greasepaint on her neck when she’d rushed to leave the dressing room after her evening performance.  She still wore mascara, and she’d been crying, which had made her eyeliner run.”

 

You will grow to know these characters in An Honorable Man.  They confide in you.  They bring out the best and worst in each other. But, even so, you’ll find you don’t know all their secrets, but the tightly woven plot makes you yearn to know.  An Honorable Man will lead you down back alleys and into the world of spies and the realm of constant suspicion.   Tight. Exciting. Keeps you on edge to the last page.