Today, my blog guest is Charles Ameringer. Charles
is professor emeritus of Latin American history at Penn State University and a former captain in the
USAF Reserve. Before beginning his teaching career, he served as an
intelligence analyst in the U.S. Department of Defense.
His book The Old Spook is
a spy/detective novel about a burned out CIA operative Tom Miller that morphs
Richard Burton (Alec Leamus) into Humphrey Bogart (Sam Spade)—and back again! A
tale of espionage and sleuthing that engages the reader in the culture and
tradecraft of the CIA and the dilemma of government secrecy in a democratic
society. The novel begins with a
flashback of the old spook’s career that reveals the stress of shady dealings
with sinister characters and transports the reader to such places as Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Chile. Miller
has hair-raising encounters with the Russian agent who recruited Lee Harvey
Oswald and meetings with Miami Mafia figures. He’s involved in several plots to
assassinate Fidel Castro.
In the wake of the Watergate
scandals and Jimmy Carter’s purging of the clandestine services, Miller takes
forced retirement.
Not
ready to call it quits, however, he goes home to Milwaukee where he opens a detective agency
and takes on a missing-person case that unwittingly puts him on the trail of a
Mafia hit-man. This case gains the attention of Detroit crime bosses and the CIA itself and
then there’s an attempt on his life…
The
novel covers the 1950s to the 1990s and plenty of names are dropped – Dulles
and Helms of the CIA, the Kennedys, Guevara, the missing union boss Jimmy
Hoffa, the Mafia chieftains Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, Oliver North et
al. In the style of Upton Sinclair and Herman Wouk, the fictional Tom Miller
interacts with actual events and personalities to provide an entertaining and
intriguing read.
All author royalties will be donated to the Wounded
Warrior Project.
Review
The fictional Tom Miller interacts with actual
events and personalities through recent history played out on the global stage.
Often, it reads as though Miller was there, liaising with shady wheelers and
dealers in South and Central America.
If you have any recollection of some of these events,
you’ll soon begin to wonder if this fictional account contains much more than a
grain of truth. Fans of John Le Carré, Len Deighton and Charles McCarry will
enjoy this revelatory novel. - Pastimes Costa Blanca magazine, May 2012.
Charles Ameringer
Q & A
This is your debut
fiction book. When you were writing your non-fiction works, did you ever hanker
after writing fiction at the time?
No, not really. I
was thoroughly committed to the methodology of the History discipline, that is,
seeking empirical evidence and striving to relate events as accurately as
possible. At the same time, I always tried
to write well, in order to be stylistic and literary. After I retired, I had the urge to combine
that creative instinct with imagination.
Inspired by Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series and Woody Allen’s
“Zelig,” I did so by placing a fictional character at the scene of historical events
as they were happening. Drawing on my
experiences as a professor travelling abroad to interview persons of interest and
conduct archival research, I created a CIA operative to go where I had gone and
meet with whom I had met, only at another time and under different
circumstances.
Charles, I suspect
that the character of Tom Miller has been bouncing around in your head for a
number of years. Can you tell me when you first decided to write about Tom?
It’s true that he had probably been there for some time,
and popped into my consciousness after I finished my last scholarly work in
2009. Although an octogenarian and
retired, I still had the urge to write, but I wanted to free myself of
methodological restraints and have some fun (although there is absolutely no
distortion of factual material in The Old
Spook). Tom Miller is essentially my
alter ego. As noted, he retraces my
steps, but only to provide authenticity to the places he goes and people he
meets. Many novels are autobiographical
in nature. For example, Ernest Hemingway
was an ambulance driver in Italy
during the First World War, providing the template for Frederic Henry in A Farewell To Arms. As a result, such novels are unique; there is
none other like each and there never can be.
Your book reminds
me of Richard Pape’s Arm me Audacity,
because when I finished that I really wondered if the narrative was true.
Obviously, you feature real people and the big events you relate were true –
but are you able to enlighten us as to how much of the double-dealing and political
chicanery actually occurred?
As you say, the big picture is a factual account, being
based on the extensive research I completed for my non-fiction study, U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side
of American History, which David Kahn (The
Codebreakers) describes as “one of the first and one of the best surveys of
American foreign intelligence.” Tom
Miller’s presence at these events is the product of my imagination, but his
specific actions in no way alter the truth of what was occurring around
him. As Dean Andrade, the host of the
“Milwaukee Authors” website, writes in his review of The Old Spook: “I really enjoyed the blend of real history with
fiction, with a story that weaves together famous names and events—the Bay of
Pigs, Che Guevara, the Kennedy assassination, Jimmy Hoffa, Oliver North,
Aldrich Ames, and much more—all told with sharp historical accuracy and keen
insight.” However, there is a story
within the story; the novel is divided into three parts and Part Two, “Where’s
Aldo?” is pure fiction. None of what
occurs there is true, which may explain why it’s the most exciting portion of
the book, given that Tom’s character enjoys a free rein. Still, it wouldn’t make sense without the context
of the truthful double-dealing detailed in the other parts. Nor, is this to suggest that the other parts
of the novel are lacking in thrills and suspense; as the popular author Debra
Hartmann states in her review, “A great read, entertaining and powerful, a
story that leaves you constantly on the edge.”
You definitely
gave The Old Spook a sense of place. Do you think this is important in
fiction, and why?
Combining the places where I lived and worked with
my travels as a professor engaged in research, I sought to give Tom and the
reader a “real feel” of the venues in the novel Perhaps
it’s the teacher in me, but I think a work ought to be informative; if you’re
going to take the reader to the campus of the National University of Mexico,
for a drink in La Floridita in Havana, a stay in a pensión in San José, Costa
Rica, or a trek to the copper mine in Chuquicamata, Chile, you are obliged to
make it as realistic as possible. To
have been there helps, although some place descriptions may be unavoidably
second-hand..
I believe your wife is a strong support in
your writing. How do your family/friends feel about your switch to fiction?
Initially,
my wife and sons were sceptical when I put on my novelist’s hat, but
subsequently were quite sincere in saying that they really liked the novel and
wondered “if we have a grandma Moses phenomenon here.” However, my sons were a bit taken aback by
my use of obscenities in the text, but I explained that it wouldn’t do to clean
up the language of the fictional Mafia hit man Jack Aldo, a central figure in
the story. .
You’ve just celebrated your 87th
birthday and I know that time marches on. Do you have plans for another fiction
book, or do you feel you’ve said all you needed to say in The Old Spook?
I don’t intend ever to stop writing and I have a
number of ideas in mind. Right now, I’m
toying with a story about a freshly-minted assistant professor coping with a
Berkley-inspired campus movement during the 1960s.
A tall order, I know, but what is your
favourite book? And why?
It is a
tall order, but I think it’s Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. In my opinion,
there’s no place as fascinating as Old Havana (pre-Fidel, that is), which
Greene portrays beautifully, and it’s a whimsical and tragic tale of an
unwitting screw-up that somehow fate permits to end well.
Where can readers find you?
You can find me on Facebook, Goodreads, and
Amazon.com
and The Old Spook on the following links:
Thank you, Charles.
Books by Charles Ameringer:
The Democratic Left in Exile: The
Antidictatorial Struggle in the Caribbean,
1945-1959
Don Pepe: A Political Biography of José
Figueres of Costa Rica
Democracy in Costa Rica
U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of
American History
The Caribbean
Legion: Patriots, Politicians, Soldiers of Fortune, 1946-1950
The Cuban Democratic Experience: The
Auténtico Years, 1944-1952
The Socialist Impulse: Latin
America in the Twentieth Century
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