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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2005, 386 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2006, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket: In Legends, Littell focuses on the life of
one agent caught in a "wilderness of mirrors" where both remembering and
forgetting his past are deadly options. Martin Odum is a CIA field agent turned
private detective, struggling his way through a labyrinth of past
identities--"legends" in CIA parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante
Pippen, an IRA explosives maven? Or Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War expert?
These men like different foods, speak different languages, have different
skills. Is he suffering from multiple personality disorder, brainwashing, or
simply exhaustion? Can Odum trust the CIA psychiatrist? Or Stella Kastner, a
young Russian woman who engages him to find her brother-in-law so he can give
her sister a divorce. As Odum redeploys his dormant tradecraft skills to
solve Stella's case, he travels the globe battling mortal danger and
psychological disorientation.
Comment: The first Robert Littell novel I read was
The Company, a vast but never sprawling 894 page novel covering 45 years of CIA
history from its founding in 1947 (from the ashes of the OSS) up until 1995.
Legends is set on a smaller scale (running to a mere 380 something pages)
in post-Cold War Russia. Critical opinion is mixed, but generally positive - the negatives are that a few
critics feel that Littell's prose is a little clichéd and some feel that Odum's
search for his real identity is a little overdone.
"No respecter of the classical unities, Littell imbues his tale with the same
split personality of its protagonist, veering from jocose banter to grim
torture, but for readers prepared to follow his lead, he delivers a smart, fun,
strange adventure in the legendary tradition of Odysseus, yet another wily
trickster who boasts to his peril that he is "no man." - Booklist.
"Legends is a rich, funny, perverse, angry, haunting, supremely
entertaining look at our world and our government." - The Washington Post.
This review
first ran in the May 3, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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