As the work of a politically conservative novelist, Buckley's fiction is in the tradition of Ayn Rand, the later John Dos Passos, and the popular novelist Alan Drury. Also, Blackford Oakes must remind the reader of Ian Fleming's James Bond except that he is far more religious and moral. Reviewers have derogatorily called him a Boy Scout, but this is precisely what Buckley means him to be. He is a superman who may be seen as Buckley's answer to the exhausted, no longer young, no longer handsome, far from enthusiastic heroes of John le Carre or Graham Greene. Indeed, it has been noted that Blackford Oakes, as a moral and a religious young man, bears a much closer resemblance to the hero of an old fashioned boys' tale, than to the hero of a contemporary espionage novel, and his sexual adventures have been compared to the...