"A brilliant achievement. . . .Like the best work of Greene and Le Carre, it is more than genre fiction; it is literature. . . . "Convergence"] is the most plausible, and perhaps the best spy novel ever written by an American." --Arthur Maling, "Chicago Tribune"
"An intelligent, readable novel about two kinds of intrigue--international and bureaucratic. He succeeds admirably at both tasks."--Ross Thomas, "Washington Post"
"A solid, provocative first novel about the 'deadly game of espionage' . . . Thoughtfulness and human frailty take precedence over action and suspense. Irony is the prevailing mode. . . . Fuller depicts intelligence work--its technical minutiae and its vaunted goals--convincingly. And he subtly weaves various parallels into complementary layers of potential convergence."--Jeffrey Burke, "Wall Street Journal"
"A fast-moving, dramatic, thinking person's spy novel."--Nelson DeMille, "Newsday"
Industry Reviews
Tokyo, 1971: Jerry Birch, a naive young US Army staff sergeant involved in top-classified electronics work, is approached by a Soviet agent; after accepting some fancy meals and a little cash in return for un-classified documents, he reports what's going on to military intelligence. . . who report it to the CIA. So minor spymaster Richard Harper, shakily recovering from a particularly ugly Vietnam case, is put in charge of the Birch matter - and Harper, soon realizing that innocent, open-faced Birch is a natural spy (able to outwit the lie detector), decides to use him as a double agent. Can Birch convince KGB Colonel Kerzhentseff that the US has new electronic equipment that will defeat the Soviets' latest coding device? So it seems - though Birch will suffer an interrogation-ordeal, marital upsets, and considerable angst while holding up under the pressure of being a double-agent. And the operation is considered a success, with Birch retired from spy duty. But now it's 1978, in Washington, and CIA-man Harper, out on assignment with the FBI, happens to spot a clandestine meeting between Col. Kerzhentseff and Birch! Furthermore, Birch, under interrogation, claims that he was ordered to re-establish the KGB connection by Harper - or at least by someone who knew Harper's code-word! So: what's going on? Is Birch a traitor? Or Harper? And was the KGB outsmarting the CIA all along? Well, Harper will manage to wrap things up with comforting neatness, thanks to Birch's suicide and a dubious theory - but the narrator of this slow but unusually intelligent thriller (a nameless, aphoristically inclined CIA veteran who has always distrusted the too-sensitive Harper) remains unconvinced. First-novelist Fuller, an editor/reporter for the Chicago Tribune, emphasizes the psychological wear-and-tear involved in the spy game here, the various shades of corruption and amorality. And though the detached, non-participatory narration sometimes results in a lack of focused involvement, espionage readers who prefer quiet, subtle tensions to convoluted action will find this a welcome addition to the CIA shelf: thoughtful, literate, yet unpretentious and un-pious - with gravely witty dialogue (and echoes of some real-life cases) spicing up the generally somber proceedings. (Kirkus Reviews)
