Legends: A Novel of Dissimulation

If there is one cliche that I dread above all others in the suspense genre, it is that of a split personality. I don't know how many stories I've read (or movies I've seen) where the culprit wound up being someone with multiple personality disorder; the writer seems to think of this as a great twist, but it's really just an overused plot device that can only pulled off by lying to the reader. (It's fine to mislead a reader, but lying to the reader is a cheat, like when a character saves the day with a talent that was never even hinted at before.) So what's my opinion on Robert Littell's novel on split personalities, Legends? I thought it was pretty good. What makes Legends the exception to the rule? A couple things: for one thing, the split personality plot device is established early on, not thrown in later as a plot twist; secondly, Littell is a good writer who can pull this off; in the hands of a decent author, any cliche can get new life. In this case, we get the story of Martin Odum, a retired CIA agent who now makes a living as a private eye. When Odum had been a field agent, he had adopted a number of guises, in particular that of Dante Pippen, ex-IRA bomber, and Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War historian and gun-runner (each fake background being known as a "legend"). Odum was particularly gifted at adopting new identities and accomplishing missions successfully; unfortunately, he is TOO gifted, and he has begun to lose control of his alternate personalities. Legends actually opens like an old-fashioned hard-boiled mystery: Odum is in his New York office when a beautiful woman comes in and asks him to find a missing person. Stella Kastner wants Odum to find Samat Ugor-Zhilov, a Russian criminal who is married to Stella's devoutly religious sister. Samat has abandoned his wife, but to get a divorce under Jewish law, Samat must authorize it, and to do this, he must first be found. At first, Odum wants nothing to do with the case, but when he is warned off by his ex-CIA boss, his interest is piqued and he starts the search. This search will have him going all over the place, from Israel to England to Czechoslovakia to Lithuania, getting closer and closer to Samat, while people related to the case start dying. To succeed, Odum needs to rely on some of the talents of his alternate identities, Pippen and Dittmann. As he moves forward, he also is forced to confront aspects of his past that could explain why his personality is as fractured as it is, to the point that he isn't even certain if "Odum" is his true self. The prevalent theme in Legends seems involve the multiple identities that people construct for themselves. While Odum/Pippen/Dittmann is the central split-identity character, many of the other characters seem to lead double lives, most notably Samat himself, who appears to be both a vicious Russian mobster and a benevolent medical equipment supplier. This is only the second book I've read by Littell. The first was The

"Legends," the latest novel by spymaster Robert Littell, obviously sparks strong opinions. Reviews on this site range from one to five stars, and that's rare. Chalk me up as one of those who drank the Kool-Aid on this book, as I got hooked by the first chapter. "Legends" revolves around the lost memory and multiple personalities of one Martin Odum, who first appears to be a bit of a loser. But like the novel itself, Martin emerges as a darker, more capable character as the pages fly by. But, at the outset, Martin's a former intelligence officer with a spotty memory who is working on his ambition of boring himself to death while working as a small-time private investigator, living and working in a hum-drum apartment over a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. But thrills are clearly on the horizon when a seeming-routine assignment of tracking down a wandering husband triggers a visit by the current top-dawg at the CIA, uttering words of dire portent and making sinister references to past, forgotten events? In the hands of an original writer such as Littell, plenty. It's no surprise that soon after Odum agrees to take the case, bodies begin to pile up. But the fact that dead bodies aren't a surprise doesn't mean that Littell is not a master at conjuring up some surprising "hits," which he describes with his trademark economy. After reading Littell's masterful fiction about the history of the CIA, "The Company," I anticipated that "Legends" would be another work of clean-cut historical fiction. Instead, "Legends" represents a return for Littell to his earlier creepy novel, "The Sisters." In that novel, Littell's villains set in motion a cat-and-mouse game involving the United States and the Soviet Union through the activation of a long-hidden Soviet assassin. The story gradually unfolded through hints and misdirection until the reader suddenly realized that Littell was describing one of the worst crimes of the real-world 20th century. In "Legends," Littell keeps the reader guessing about what is actually going on by keeping his "hero," Martin Odum, from knowing exactly what is going on. Martin, we learn from the head honcho at the CIA, has a unique ability to sink into different "legends," or distinct personalities and backgrounds fabricated for agents by the CIA. Martin has at least two distinct separate "legends," including an Irish bomber and a history buff-turned-elite marksman. But is Martin Odum even who he thinks he is, or is Odum merely another legend that has taken hold? Using a storyline that jumps back and forth in time and takes Martin to many of the hotspots of the 1990s, "Legends" takes its time as Martin follows a series of events that morphs from tracking down a wayward husband into uncovering Martin's past involvement in CIA plans of global impact. This may be Littell's most unsettling book yet, as he uses repetition, confusion, and subtlety to put you into the confused, amnesiac mind of Martin Odum, who struggle

Martin Odum has learned to live with it. Sometimes he's Martin Odum, former CIA operative, currently a private detective in Brooklyn. But sometimes he's Dante Pippen, an Irishman trained in explosives by the IRA, and sometimes he's Lincoln Dittman, a Civil War expert so obsessed with his subject that he believes he was actually present at the Battle of Fredericksburg. All these personalities are legends, or cover stories, the CIA devised for him while on assignment in some of the world's most dangerous places. All these legends involve different backgrounds, talents, and character traits, and Martin has embodied these legends so successfully that he has developed an unusual kind of multiple personality disorder and can no longer tell which is his own original personality. Currently he's working as a detective in Brooklyn, taking on cases that seem mundane compared to his former profession. Lost dogs and mahjongg debts, as he describes them. All that changes when he is hired to locate the husband of an Orthodox Jewish woman. The missing man has abandoned his wife, and her religion dictates that he must be located in order for a divorce to be granted. The woman's sister and father, who has a history with the KGB, hire Martin to find the vanished husband; his marital woes may be the least of his problems. The chase is on and the hunt leads Martin all over the world, from Israel to the Amish country, uncoincidentally bringing in some dangerous characters from Martin's former career. In addition to his personality disorder, Martin suffers from amnesia and cannot remember the traumatic event that caused his own personality to diffract so severely. His therapist is sure that there was one such event until she mysteriously was warned off the case and ordered to forget her findings. Martin finds himself in pursuit of one of the world's most powerful, most dangerous criminals, all the while drawing nearer to the truth about the terrible incident that destroyed him. Touching on the collapse of the Soviet Union, world economy, Chechen rebels, Israel, Lebanon, the state of modern intelligence-gathering, and the perils of beekeeping, LEGENDS provides enough action for the most devoted espionage fan. It also reflects seriously on the fragility of identity and the dangers of its loss. --- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn

If you love Le Carre, Alan Furst, Daniel Silva, and Tom Clancy but have never read a novel by Robert Littell, you are in for a serious treat - because Littell is a better, more versatile, more entertaining and intelligent author than any other writer working within the so-called espionage or thriller genre. The fact that his books are labeled "spy thrillers" at all is somewhat misleading - maybe the marketplace requires such labels, but in fact Littell's novels stand on a par with the best works being written right now, in any genre. Littell's previous novel, The Company, was a mammoth, multigenerational saga of the CIA, basically starting with its creation out of the defunct OSS following World War II and taking readers right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties. It is without doubt one of the classics, among the top 5 novels published within the last twenty-five years. Legends is an entirely different kind of book. Though it is no less intelligent, no less suspenseful (in fact, it is quite a bit more suspenseful), no less visionary than its predecessor, it's a novel that operates on a more personal, more focused level. There is a single main character (in The Company there were about two dozen), a man with a lost identity which is slowly revealed to him over the course of a manhunt/investigation he is privately conducting. He's a CIA agent who's retired - or has been retired - because of psychological trauma he suffered on the job which he can no longer remember. As an agent he assumed many false identities in his undercover work, now he's no longer sure which of the identities he remembers is the "real" one, and as he's slowly enveloped back into the shadow world of the CIA, he uncovers clues. Pretty soon, the CIA wants himn dead. The ending of this book is so jaw-dropping, so unexpected - it blew my mind. (I'm fairly experienced with surprise endings, and any writer who can shock me this much earns my everlasting respect.) Beware: if you start reading this book before you go to bed, you won't be able to fall asleep until you've finished it.You'll be up the entire night!

Robert Littell writes spy novels of clarity and appeal. By clarity I mean that, yes, everything is murky and underhanded and, no, nothing is what it seems, but he avoids that pointless "plot and counterplot" spy-writer fixation that makes me throw too many thrillers down in despair muttering, "who cares?" By appeal, Littell offers twisty, complex plots, interesting characters, and enough moral ambiguity to keep you happily hooked. In the case of "Legends," Martin Udom if a former CIA field agent who has had so many identities (or legends, as they're called in the business) that he's not sure who he is. He thinks Udom is his real self-that is, the person he was before he joined the CIA and became many other people-but in his new job as an unsuccessful private detective, he is receiving internal and external flashes indicating that Martin Udom may in fact be a legend, and that his real identity may be as someone he thought was a legend. The man is in psychic crisis, but he takes on the case of a Russian woman who wants him to find her brother-in-law so he can grant her sister a divorce. This search will initiate a number of near misses with people and information he thinks he would like to forget. He's pulled to regions that featured in his spy-life which brings him closer to complete disorientation. Was he chosen by the CIA because he had multiple personalities, or because he had none at all? Littell's "The Company" was a huge historical spy piece which looked at the positive and negative impact of CIA activity from the organization's inception. "Legends" narrows that focus to the effect on individuals, one in particular, while keeping up the expected pace. It is a thoughtful, exciting, and compelling read.