Christopher’s Ghosts by Charles McCarry

Published by

Sarah Ann

on

October 20, 2010

Christopher’s Ghosts is the 10th and final book in the Paul Christopher series by Charles McCarry.

This one takes us to Berlin in the late 1930s. Paul’s family is German, but they’re constantly being harassed by the Nazis. The fact that Paul’s girlfriend Rima is Jewish doesn’t help. There’s one main bully in this book, and it’s S.S. officer Franz Stutzer.

Franz Stutzer interrogates and tortures Paul and Rima for the first two-thirds of the book. Then, it skips to the future, where Paul is working as a professional spy. In this final book, Paul tracks down the evil Stutzer to seek revenge.

All throughout this book, I was hoping Stutzer would get what he deserved in the end, especially after what he does to Rima in the final chapter of the 1930s portion.

In the last chapter of Christopher’s Ghosts, Paul finally catches up to Stutzer. By this point, Stutzer himself has been tortured (some even managed to castrate him) and he’s a little worse for the wear. Paul also gets some of his espionage pals to capture Stutzer and interrogate him, but none of it seems as awful as what Stutzer did to Rima and Paul’s family. In the end, Stutzer meets his end just like Rima.

I wasn’t too crazy about Christopher’s Ghosts, but I think perhaps I probably just needed to read all the other books in this series to fully appreciate it. The first two books in this series are The Miernik Dossier (1974) and The Tears of Autumn (1974).

Other books by Charles McCarry include:

What did you think about Christopher’s Ghosts?

Last Updated on January 27, 2026 by Sarah Ann

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