The Better Angels

Last updated
First edition (publ. E.P. Dutton h/b) TheBetterAngels.jpg
First edition (publ. E.P. Dutton h/b)

The Better Angels is a 1979 thriller novel by Charles McCarry. It was poorly received at the time of its release; its premise of terrorists using passenger planes as instruments of destruction was considered too implausible to suspend one's disbelief. It was the basis of the comedic 1982 Richard Brooks film Wrong Is Right starring Sean Connery, which was similarly poorly received. In 2008, the book, along with other McCarry thrillers, was released by Overlook Duckworth, labeled "the prophetic thriller." [1] It is now believed to have predicted the attacks of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath. [2] The title is a reference to Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, a quote from which is the novel's epigraph, and the term is said to refer to Patrick Graham's conception of President Lockwood and Julian Hubbard.

Thriller (genre) Genre of literature, film, and television programming

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Charles McCarry was an American writer, primarily of spy fiction, and a former undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency whom The Wall Street Journal described in 2013 as the dean of American spy writers; The New Republic magazine calls him "poet laureate of the CIA."; and Otto Penzler says he has produced some "poetic masterpieces". William Zinsser calls him a "political novelist:" Jonathan Yardley, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for the Washington Post, calls him a "'serious' novelist" whose work may include "the best novel ever written about life in high-stakes Washington, DC." P.J. O'Rourke called him "the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue." O'Rourke learned about McCarry from a working covert operative who called McCarry "very realistic."

Richard Brooks American screenwriter, film director and producer

Richard Brooks was an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and film producer. Nominated for eight Oscars in his career, he was best known for Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood (1967) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

Contents

Structure

The novel is set in 1992, during an election campaign between former president Franklin Mallory and current president Bedford Forrest "Frosty" Lockwood. It opens and closes with the Midsummer and Midwinter parties held by Patrick Graham, a news anchor famous for his progressive politics, and his wife, Charlotte, and in between those isolated chapters, it is divided into four parts. Franklin Mallory wants to be the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms. During his first term, he had attempted a hostile takeover of Canada, incarcerated people for having criminal tendencies on psychological tests, and hired hundreds of thousands of out of work college graduates to work on the spaceship, Humanity, which sent a crew to Ganymede. All of these programs were undone by Lockwood.

Grover Cleveland 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American politician and lawyer who was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. He won the popular vote for three presidential elections—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was one of two Democrats to be elected president during the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933.

Ganymede (moon) The largest moon of Jupiter and in the Solar System

Ganymede, a satellite of Jupiter, is the largest and most massive of the Solar System's moons. The ninth largest object in the Solar System, it is the largest without a substantial atmosphere. It has a diameter of 5,268 km (3,273 mi) and is 8% larger than the planet Mercury, although only 45% as massive. Possessing a metallic core, it has the lowest moment of inertia factor of any solid body in the Solar System and is the only moon known to have a magnetic field. Outward from Jupiter, it is the seventh satellite and the third of the Galilean moons, the first group of objects discovered orbiting another planet. Ganymede orbits Jupiter in roughly seven days and is in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively.

The novel is predominantly focused on the Graham family and the Hubbard family. (The Hubbards are closely related to the Christophers, protagonists of most of McCarry's novels.) The Hubbards are deeply entrenched in the Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor to the CIA after the latter was shut down for corruption. Horace, son of Elliott Hubbard, had a hand in raising and educating Talil, the son of emir Ibn Awad of Hagreb, a tiny Arab nation and recent oil state. Talil was decapitated for allegedly murdering Awad at the signed request of his father. Horace's brother Julian Hubbard, also with FIS, is President Lockwood's closest adviser. He is married to his second wife, Emily (which is also the name of his deceased mother), and has two children, Elliott, and Jenny, by his first wife, Caroline, who was once raped by Patrick Graham, both friend and rival to Julian. Emily longs to become pregnant with a child, and Julian wants to name the child Horace. The three names are prominent in his family, but its men never name sons for themselves.

Plot

The novel's inciting incident is when one-legged Clive Wilmot, an Englishman (England is out of money, and Eton-educated British often work as servants to wealthy Americans) arrives uninvited at the Grahams' Midsummer Party, telling Patrick that President Lockwood, who is supposedly liberal and a champion of the people, had Ibn Awad executed.

Eton College school in Windsor and Maidenhead, UK

Eton College is a Public School for boys aged 13-18 in Eton, near Windsor in Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore, as a sister institution to King's College, Cambridge, making it the 18th-oldest Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference school. Eton's history and influence have made Eton one of the most prestigious schools in the world.

Patrick Graham goes to visit Horace Hubbard at his home in Beirut, and learns that Ibn Awad had dysgraphia from a lesion in his brain that rendered him unable to write, and presumed uneducatable and illiterate. Patrick later learns that he is slightly behind in this information. Awad's Muslim followers admire his illiteracy, and he is well known to have scribes to take dictation for him. Eventually, though, Patrick obtains an audiocassette from a government official named Jack Philindros, in which President Lockwood orders Horace to arrange for the murder of Awad, believing that Awad has nuclear bombs that he plans to use on Jerusalem and New York City. He is believed to have connections with a terrorist group called the Eye of Gaza that has been using suicide bombers in airplanes over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Beirut City in Lebanon

Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. No recent population census has been conducted, but 2007 estimates ranged from slightly more than 1 million to 2.2 million as part of Greater Beirut. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast, Beirut is the country's largest and main seaport.

Dysgraphia is a deficiency in the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. Dysgraphia is a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding, and finger sequencing. It often overlaps with other learning disabilities such as speech impairment, attention deficit disorder, or developmental coordination disorder. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), dysgraphia is characterized as a learning disability in the category of written expression when one's writing skills are below those expected given a person's age measured through intelligence and age-appropriate education. The DSM is not clear in whether or not writing refers only to the motor skills involved in writing, or if it also includes orthographic skills and spelling.

Scribe person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession

A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.

Patrick is unable to resist a good story, though he is devoted to President Lockwood in spite of Lockwood's own failings. Large cities are dark at night to conserve electricity, and garbage pickup has stopped, causing urban areas to become squalid and filthy. Based on what he learns, when he finally broadcasts the story, he claims that Lockwood saved Jerusalem and New York by his action, although the nuclear bombs were never found. Until Mallory starts pressing the issue, the announcement that Lockwood had Awad killed makes little impact on the polls. Opinion of Patrick Graham goes up when Emily Hubbard does a magazine story on him. Emily, however, becomes convinced that her first child with Julian died in the womb as a direct result of learning of his and Horace's involvement in the murder of Awad. Only Julian and Emily treat it as an actual death, having seen the fetus, about the size of a finger, in the toilet.

At the novel's climax, Clive Wilmot is identified as the source of the nuclear bombs, although the fact that he is willing to sit on their cases indicates an unlikelihood that they ever existed in the first place. He is given a fortune in Swiss bank notes, which he leaves in a cave in Hagreb. He is met by an American calling himself "Hugo" who gives him a Mercedes and disappears into the crowd. While Wilmot is urinating, Hamad, leader of the Eye of Gaza, gets out of the trunk and strangles him. Rose MacKenzie, lover of Horace Hubbard and a mathematician in charge of FIS computer systems, reveals that she is able to steal the election. With the passcodes "a sunlit upland" in a speech made by Lockwood on the abandoned Washington Mall after terrorist attacks at speeches in landmark locations, and "pastrami, hold the mayonnaise," Rose gets a certain number of votes in places where computerized voting is set up (only in California, New York, and Michigan) for Mallory and gives them to Lockwood, causing him to win the election by a very close margin. Mallory refuses to give a concession speech.

Mathematician person with an extensive knowledge of mathematics

A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in his or her work, typically to solve mathematical problems.

Pastrami Meat preserved by partial drying, seasoning, smoking and steaming

Pastrami is a meat product usually made from beef, and sometimes from pork, mutton, or turkey. The raw meat is brined, partially dried, seasoned with herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. Beef plate is the traditional cut of meat for making pastrami, although it is now common in the United States to see it made from beef brisket, beef round, and turkey. Like corned beef, pastrami was originally created as a way to preserve meat before refrigeration.

Film version

In 1982, Richard Brooks, using his own screenplay, adapted the novel into the film, Wrong Is Right , more satirical and certainly more broadly comic than the novel. Patrick Graham was renamed Patrick Hale (Sean Connery), and the only other names retained from the novel were Lockwood (George Grizzard), Ibn Awad (Ron Moody), Mallory (Leslie Nielsen), Philindros (G. D. Spradlin), and Hagreb. The Hubbards, largely the focus of the novel, were virtually omitted, although John Saxon portrays a "Homer Hubbard." The film was as poorly received as the novel was at the time.

Revival

Attempts to revive the novel and film as "prophetic" in 2008 were largely unsuccessful commercially, in spite of strong critical response. The novel was riddled with typographical errors and quickly remaindered, as was the DVD issue of the film version.

Sources

Charles McCarry. The Better Angels. (1979). New York: Overlook Duckworth Press, 2008.

Related Research Articles

Sean Connery Scottish actor and producer

Sir Thomas Sean Connery is a retired Scottish actor and producer, who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.

<i>Wuthering Heights</i> 1847 novel by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë's only novel, was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell". It was written between October 1845 and June 1846. Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.

Graham Greene English writer, playwright, and literary critic

Henry Graham Greene, better known by his pen name Graham Greene, was an English novelist regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers. He was shortlisted, in 1966 and 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective.

<i>The Sum of All Fears</i> novel by Tom Clancy

The Sum of All Fears is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 14, 1991. Serving as the sequel to Clear and Present Danger (1989), main character Jack Ryan, who is now the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, tries to stop a crisis concerning the Middle East peace process where Palestinian and former East German terrorists conspire to bring the United States and Soviet Union into nuclear war. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, which is a reboot of the Jack Ryan film series and starring Ben Affleck as the younger iteration of the CIA analyst, was released on May 31, 2002.

Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and an advocate of nonviolent resistance.

<i>Wrong Is Right</i> 1982 film by Richard Brooks

Wrong Is Right, released in the UK as The Man with the Deadly Lens, is a 1982 American comedy thriller film directed by Richard Brooks from his own script based on Charles McCarry's novel The Better Angels. The film, starring Sean Connery as TV news reporter Patrick Hale, is about the theft of two suitcase nukes, and deals with media bias, reality television, government conspiracy, and Islamic terrorism.

Frederick William Nolan (born 7 March 1931 in Liverpool is an English editor and writer, mostly known as Frederick Nolan; he also uses the pen names Donald Severn, Daniel Rockfern, Christine McGuire, and Frederick H. Christian.

<i>Sudden Death</i> (1995 film) 1995 American action film directed by Peter Hyams

Sudden Death is a 1995 American sports action thriller film directed by Peter Hyams and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Powers Boothe, and Dorian Harewood. The film was released in the United States on December 22, 1995. Set at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, the film was written by Gene Quintano, based on a story by Karen Elise Baldwin, the wife of then-Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin, who was a co-producer. It was the second collaboration between Van Damme and Hyams, after Timecop (1994).

<i>Red Dragon</i> (novel) 1981 book by Thomas Harris

Red Dragon is a novel by American author Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. The plot follows former FBI profiler Will Graham, who comes out of retirement to find and apprehend an enigmatic serial-killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy", who is committing familicidal murders. The novel introduced the character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial-killer, to whom Graham reluctantly turns for advice and has a dark past with. The title refers to the figure from William Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.

<i>Take a Girl Like You</i> novel by Kingsley Amis

Take a Girl Like You is a comic novel by Kingsley Amis. The narrative follows the progress of twenty-year-old Jenny Bunn, who has moved from her family home in the North of England to a small town not far from London to teach primary school children. Jenny is a 'traditional' Northern working-class girl whose dusky beauty strikes people as being at odds with the old-fashioned values she has gained from her upbringing, not least the conviction of 'no sex before marriage'. A thread of the novel concerns the frustrations of the morally dubious Patrick Standish, a 30-year-old teacher at a local private secondary school and his attempts to, by hook or by crook, accomplish the seduction of Jenny; all this against a backdrop of Jenny's new teaching job, Patrick's work and his leisure time with flatmate and colleague Graham and their new acquaintance, the well-off and somewhat older man-about-town, Julian Ormerod.

<i>The Next Man</i> 1976 film by Richard C. Sarafian

The Next Man is a 1976 American political action thriller film starring Sean Connery, Adolfo Celi, Cornelia Sharpe and Charles Cioffi. Critical reaction at its opening was not positive. Music for the film features New York City guitarist Frederic Hand, as well as the film score debut for composer Michael Kamen.

A political thriller is a thriller that is set against the backdrop of a political power struggle. They usually involve various extra-legal plots, designed to give political power to someone, while his opponents try to stop him. They can involve national or international political scenarios. Political corruption, terrorism, and warfare are common themes. Political thrillers can be based on true facts such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the Watergate Scandal. There is a strong overlap with the conspiracy thriller.

Ransom, known in North America and some countries as The Terrorists, is a 1974 Eastmancolor film starring Sean Connery and Ian McShane and directed by Finnish director Caspar Wrede. The plot concerns a group of terrorists who try to extract a large sum of money from two governments.

<i>On the Fiddle</i> 1961 film by Cyril Frankel

On the Fiddle is a 1961 British comedy film directed by Cyril Frankel and starring Sean Connery, Alfred Lynch, Cecil Parker, Stanley Holloway, Eric Barker, Mike Sarne, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Kathleen Harrison, Victor Maddern and John Le Mesurier. It was based on the 1961 novel Stop at a Winner by R.F. Delderfield who served in the RAF in World War II.

<i>Girl in the News</i> 1940 film by Carol Reed

Girl in the News is a 1940 British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood, Barry K. Barnes and Emlyn Williams.

<i>The Disappearance</i> 1977 film by Stuart Cooper

The Disappearance is a 1977 British-Canadian thriller film directed by Stuart Cooper and starring Donald Sutherland, Francine Racette and David Hemmings. It is based on the novel Echoes of Celandine by Derek Marlowe.

<i>The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker</i> 1959 film by Henry Levin

The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker is a 1959 DeLuxe Color film starring Clifton Webb and Dorothy McGuire directed by Henry Levin in CinemaScope. The film is based on the 1953 Broadway play of the same, which ran for 221 performances. Burgess Meredith starred as Horace Pennypacker and Martha Scott as 'Ma' Pennypacker.

Jerusalem Countdown is a 2011 Christian thriller film adapted from the speculative fiction novel of the same name novel by John Hagee. It was directed and co-written by Harold Cronk and stars David A.R. White, Anna Zielinski, Randy Travis, Lee Majors, Stacy Keach, and Marco Khan.

The following is a complete list of books published by Tom Clancy, an American author of contemporary spy fiction and military fiction.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.