Word: authors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like the artist in her story, Atwood sketches the "imperfect flesh" of those who "show signs of the forces acting upon them, who have been chipped a little, rained on, frayed, like shells on the beach." Not beautiful people, these characters, but in the author's quick hands they are something far more intriguing and valuable: they are alive...
Knightley estimates that the CIA now employs about 16,000 people. Add to that the million or more who are directly engaged in deception and analysis throughout the world, and the potential for chaos is enormous. As the author's survey of modern snooping illustrates with unrestrained relish, free- lancers, self-serving desk jockeys, double and triple agents turn espionage into what James J. Angleton, former chief of the CIA's counterintelligence division, called a "wilderness of mirrors...
...general, however, the author holds the effectiveness of espionage to be overrated. Perhaps, but Knightley cannot prove this with lively anecdotes bounced from a wilderness of mirrors. He is more convincing when demonstrating that the gathering of secrets, and the spreading of lies, is one of the world's biggest growth industries...
Legend will someday have it that Author Elmore Leonard became an overnight success with his 23rd novel. Such is not quite the case. True, Glitz (1985) rocketed toward the top of hardback best-seller lists, a feat that earlier Leonard books had not accomplished. Credit for this commercial breakthrough has been given to the huge promotional campaign waged on behalf of Glitz by its publisher. All those ads certainly did not hurt. But Leonard's triumph may have a somewhat less expensive explanation: the devoted readers who enjoyed and passed along the writer's early westerns (Hombre) and those...
...Executive might have produced disbelief. Now stretches of the novel seem to run in tandem with daily headlines. This accident of timing may help the book's sales, but Leonard's imaginative license is liable to be mistaken for a matter of fact. That would be unfair because the author makes unlikely events spring from carefully prepared plausibilities, some of which, through no fault of his own, may actually occur...