Craig Thomas' Charles Buckholz: A Few Thoughts

Craig Thomas' Kenneth Aubrey novels, like most comparable series', bring back not only the star but his supporting cast. (Mitchell Gant, in fact, was prominent enough in Firefox that he easily became a series protagonist in his own right, the central figure in three sequels, one of which cut Aubrey out altogether.)

This matters the more in that Thomas is rather stronger on characterization than most writers of action-adventure.

Still, after reading several Aubrey novels, and becoming very familiar with the name "Buckholz," I realized that the possessor of the name made almost no impression whatsoever. Yes, he was a very senior CIA man who could be thought of as Aubrey's American counterpart, but mainly he mattered because he was a point of contact with the bigger power in the special relationship, with all its import and resources.

In that he can seem Felix Leiter to Aubrey's James Bond.

Considering Ian Fleming's development of Leiter it has often been remarked that Fleming's patriotic inclinations and notions of how Britain could continue to count as a power in the world were a factor--America greatly superior to Britain in sheer economic and military muscle, but (a Fleming could hope) Britain America's superior at "playing the game," so much so that its superior expertise gave it a claim to being an equal partner, rather than a junior one.

I get less sense of anything like this in Thomas' books, very understandably. Britain's place in the world circa 1976 was a long way from its place circa 1953 (while the same could even go for America), making such visions less tenable. And at any rate, part of what gives Thomas his interest--and probably conduces to his giving us more interesting characters--is his being less inclined to that kind of nationalistic self-flattery than other writers are. Certainly American operators like Gant, or Clark in Sea Leopard, get treated with a respect Fleming never showed Leiter, while in a different way how Thomas handled Vorontsyev and Folley in Snow Falcon is consistent with that. However, it may be that even after Fleming's intention ceased to be noticed, or taken seriously, his handling of the duo of Fleming and Bond still had its influence on later writers.