The Secret Lovers

The front cover of a paperback edition, probably from 1977.

The Secret Lovers, published by E.P. Dutton in 1977, was the third of seven novels by the American novelist Charles McCarry featuring an American intelligence agent named Paul Christopher. Although it was published after The Tears of Autumn, it takes place in 1960, a year later than the events in The Miernik Dossier and three years before the beginning of Autumn. The word secret in the title is apparently a noun rather than an adjective. At one point the cool, distant Christopher tries to explain his remoteness to his wife, "I love secrets, we all do. That's why we do the work.... I put my emotions aside.... I couldn't do the job if I let myself go free."

Recurring characters

In most of McCarry's novels, both those about Christopher and those about his cousins the Hubbards, there are characters who turn up in more than one of the books. In The Secret Lovers we have Paul Christopher, who had been in two earlier books, and the first appearance of his wife, Cathy, as well David Patchen, a Harvard roommate, fellow soldier in World War II, and colleague in their intelligence agency. Barney Wolkowicz, who will have important roles in Christopher's future, is chief of the Berlin station here.