Stained Glass is more of a novel than a thriller, and it differs from the idols of its marketplace in some interesting ways. The first is in its sense of character. The second is in the correlative of its title. The third and most important difference is political. Stained Glass is squarely centered on a political issue, not a fantasy. It is worth reading and remembering because it is informed by strategy, and consists, as a novel, in the working out of a political possibility….
The subject is the unification of East and West Germany at a time when this might still have been attempted. The book has a short timetable; all of the action is dependent on the defeat of Konrad Adenauer by [Wintergrin,] a man prepared to take many more chances than der Alte—a man whom the United States has an acknowledged interest in removing before he becomes too serious an affront to the Soviet Union. The agon of the book doesn't concern the morality of his assassination, only its political wisdom. This is less cynical and more important than it sounds: we are assuming that Intelligence is not moral, and that this allows it to be accurate.
This is a free excerpt of 199 words. There are 661 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Buckley, William F(rank), Jr. 1925–: Critical Essay by Ronald Berman Access Pass.
