A Very Private Plot

By William F. Buckley Jr.

Book Overview

In his latest installment in the Blackford Oakes series William F. Buckley, Jr., continues to astonish and delight. The year is 1995, and an energetic senator wants to disarm, perhaps even eliminate, the CIA. To accumulate the evidence necessary to persuade the Senate, he needs the cooperation of Blackford Oakes, now retired. He wants from Oakes an account of his covert activity ten years earlier, when Oakes served as chief of covert activities for the CIA. One such activity, as sensitive a secret as any member of the government ever husbanded, had to do with a plot by young veterans of the Soviet war against Afghanistan to assassinate the man who had just assumed the reins of government in Moscow: Mikhail Gorbachev. President Reagan was in the White House in 1985. What was his reaction when apprised of a plot by non-Americans to assassinate a man commonly acknowledged as a tyrant? What will the frustrated senator do to compel cooperation from Blackford Oakes? A Very Private Plot takes the reader inside the Kremlin, exhibiting a detailed knowledge and savoir faire characteristic of the author. And inside the Reagan White House, known well to the author, and inside the Clinton White House as well. The forces unleashed in 1985 threaten any resolution between the United States and the Soviet Union and threaten the lives of a very small unit of young Russians who remain in the memory as the tale reaches a climax. A Very Private Plot caps the ten novels that began when, at age twenty-four, Blackford Oakes was seduced by the Queen of England, launching him and American readers on travels unrivaled in cold war fiction for wit and imagination.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581824777
• ISBN13: 9781581824773
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A good Oakes novel, entertaining dual story line

While not the best Blackford Oakes novel, it's readable with a moderate amount of suspense -- not necessarily about what will happen (real-life history already contraindicates the potential of the main plot line about Gorbachev), but about why it didn't happen. A nice touch is the decade-wide dual story line with Oakes being called to testify in 1995 about the events of 1986. Characterization in the Soviet story line is a tad light; too many of the characters in the 1986 thread appear interchangeable. But it's a pleasant, fast read in the series.

The Best of the Series

This is probably the best of the Blackford Oakes books and, as another reviewer noted, it's a fitting and excellent finale to a worthy series of spy thrillers involving a credible and well-crafted protagonist. This book revolves around a plot to kill Mikhail Gorbachev when he was the leader of the Soviet Union. Buckley gives us a realistic view of life in Moscow under glasnost. Usually the Oakes books tend to be tempered in their pacing -- as you would expect from Buckley -- but this one has the burner turned up a little higher. Good suspense, good characters, good plot.

Great Book

A worthy finish to the series - makes you sad there won't be more Oakes books. The real events following the completion of the book (late 1993) don't really alter how Buckley painted 1994 and 1995. A great read.