::AMAZON REVIEWS::

When a Friend is the Enemy
This is the first of a fantastic series of novels featuring Blackford Oakes, a CIA operative during the Cold War.

With hardly a wasted word, William F. Buckley, Jr., deftly moves through the early years of Oakes, which sets him on the dangerous trail of rescuing the English monarchy from a fellow traveler - a British war hero - who manipulates his royal connections to gain vital information for his Soviet handler on the manufacturing of the hydrogen bomb.

Oakes ultimately is snarled in this secret war, where heroes may be seen as villains and the scoundrels as victims in the eyes of the public. With pointed commentary on world politics of the early 1950s and the bumbling inside The Beltway during the post-Watergate era, Buckley, Jr., sets a solid foundation for what became a classic hero in spy fiction.

Charming fiction from a writer with his own spook background
William F. Buckley Jr. showed he had a talent for fiction, as well as non-fiction writing, with this enjoyable espionage novel, the first of his Blackford Oakes adventures. Buckley unashamedly brings his old-boy background to bear in creating an Oakes who plausibly finds his way from Yale to Windsor Castle within a few months. Buckley, who served as his fictional Oakes does in the CIA of the early 1950s, has me now wondering how much of this is autobiographical.

A World War II ace graduating from Yale in the early 1950s, Oakes joins the CIA. He establishes a deep cover identity as a wealthy American postgrad doing engineering research in London, where his mother and English stepfather live. The Americans suspect secret hydrogen bomb research is leaking to the Russians from a source embarrassingly close to the fictional Queen Caroline. It is so close that the affair must never be known beyond a tiny and non-English group. The CIA finds Oakes its best option, and orders him to climb socially and root out the palace spy.

Buckley's detail on life among the British royals is one strong suit of the book. . You get the feeling he himself has probably been a royal guest at one time or another. (All in the name of literary research!) He delightfully characterizes Caroline - beautiful, married, lively and suddenly acceding to the throne in one of those accidental-death scenarios political novelists rely upon. Caroline is more of a Di than an Elizabeth. Oakes, of course, is merely serving his country in, uh, getting as close to her as his mission requires.

With Buckley's own spook background you don't know what he's making up. His allusions to the mysterious Rufus, the veteran spy called in to fix the leak, are tantalizing enough to make me wonder if such a character truly existed. His backstory here includes having been charged with deceiving the Germans that the D-Day invasion would take place at Calais rather than Normandy. Was there a man to whom Eisenhower actually gave his own dog tags in gratitude? And who wouldn't take calls from Ike or Winston Churchill?

Buckley's climax is a bit over the top but his resolution of the main characters' moral dilemmas, flies.

Escapist Espionage Escapade
Appreciation for William Buckley's rich vocabulary and operatic metaphors is required to enjoy this book. And it will help if you are a fan of "alternate" historical fiction: imagine there was an English Queen named Caroline after World War II . . .

This is for when the mood is definitely not for John le Carre, I suspect this was written with a strong dose of Buckley's "tongue-in-cheek". Give it a try, might be just the thing to relax with after an evening at the Metropolitan.

unusual, funny and pathetic
I liked this book; it is informative and funny, but the ending is overpathetic.

the best piece of fiction Buckley ever wrote
Saving the Queen is the best of the Blackford Oakes spy novels. It's the only one that is light hearted and totaly unlike Buckley's columns. Blacky is at his best in this fun and exciting spy caper. What a shame this delightful book is out of print.