Legends

August 1, 2005
Littell's witty and suspenseful tale reads like a conglomeration of John le Carré's cynical spy vs. spy elements and Ross Thomas's whimsical and darkly humorous insider's view of international politics. It takes an agile narrator to adjust to the rapidly changing moods. Making the job even more daunting is a protagonist suffering from multiple personality disorder who can shift from wry, laid-back ex–secret agent–turned–private detective Martin Odum to ebullient Irish dynamiter Dante Pippin almost within the same sentence. Gardner, with nearly 500 audiobooks to his credit, handles the job smoothly and effortlessly. He also provides a polyglot panoply of credible accents, including Russian, Irish, Israeli, Palestinian and Asian. The complex and multilayered plot finds Odum hired to locate the husband of an Israeli woman to persuade him to agree to a divorce. He soon discovers that the globe-hopping search is taking him to people and places from his own perilous days in the spy game. This is particularly true when he slips back into past "legends," personas concocted for him by his CIA superiors. In dealing with the novel's character changes, flashbacks, misdirection and surprising revelations, clarity seems to be Gardner's main goal and he achieves it admirably, all the way to the satisfying finale. Simultaneous release with the Overlook hardcover (Reviews, May 23).

Starred review from May 23, 2005
As in The Company
(2002), a long and serious chronicle of the CIA, Littell provides plenty of inside intelligence info in his superb new thriller, but he adds a decidedly comic spin. A female CIA executive looks frighteningly like Fred Astaire, while a former top agent works as a PI out of a former pool parlor above a nondescript Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. The detective's name seems to be Martin Odum, but "Fred Astaire" calls him Dante, and he also goes by Lincoln Dittmann, the name of a Civil War enthusiast whose cartons of memorabilia sit unopened in Martin's office. Is Martin Odum himself a "legend"—a fake identity dreamed up in the dark imagination of the CIA? Because he needs the work, Martin agrees to help an old Russian KGB agent find his Israeli daughter's husband and persuade the man to give her a "get"—a divorce decree required by religious law. The husband has been pretending he's Jewish to cover up his link to a Russian criminal called the Oligarkh. As the bodies of his friends and clients begin to pile up, Odum searches for answers about not only the missing husband but also himself. Wonderful writing and a great sense of fun make this another winner. Agent, Ed Victor
. 150,000 first printing; 6-city author tour
.