 only as Paul Christopher becomes an old man do readers learn about his parents and childhood.One critic notes that “As far as recurring characters go, one must look to John Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom books or Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman novels for equivalents in the scope and breadth of what McCarry accomplishes with one character and his movements through the events of the twentieth century.” 

"It’s tempting to say that Charles McCarry’s "The Tears of Autumn" is the greatest espionage novel ever written by an American, if only because it’s hard to conceive of one that could possibly be better.But since no one can claim to have read every America espionage novel ever written, let’s just say that "The Tears of Autumn" is a perfect spy novel, and that its hero, Paul Christopher, should by all rights be known the world over as the thinking man’s James Bond — and woman’s too.