The Blackford Oakes Reader

It all started when editor Sam Vaughan asked William F. Buckley, “Why don’t you try a novel?” To which America’s most renowned conservative replied, “Sam, why don’t you play a trumpet concerto?” Vaughan didn’t take up this musical challenge, but he did send Buckley a book contract the next morning, and therein lies the origin of the Blackford Oakes novels, ten stories of international intrigue with Oakes, a distinctly American CIA agent, serving as a protagonist.

The Blackford Oakes Reader is a collection of the character studies that lie at the heart of these novels. As Buckley explains in his introduction, “In the first novel I guess it is correct to say that I got the idea that it should frame one person (primarily). That person’s character and experiences should illuminate the story.”

Oakes himself is the focus of the first book, Saving the Queen. Subsequently, Buckley would examine an aristocrat trying to exert his will on post-Hitler Germany, a pair of scientists dealing with life in the Soviet Union after confinement in the Gulag, a Spaniard serving as a pawn for the Party in Communist Cuba, and eight other diverse characters, all of whom find their lives entangled in the web of international espionage.

Through his characters, Buckley gives a personal perspective to the most important and intriguing world events of the past 50 years. And his original introduction to the Blackford Oakes Reader, outlining the genesis of the novels, is in itself a treasure for Blackford Oakes fans.