Circus (novel)

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For other meanings of "Circus", see Circus.

Circus is a novel written by the Scottish novelist Alistair MacLean. It was first released in the United Kingdom by Collins in 1975 and later in the same year by Doubleday in the United States.

[edit] Plot summary

The story, written in third person narrative, concerns a trapeze artist of Eastern European origin, working in a travelling circus in the United States, who is approached by American CIA agents to return to his home city in East Germany and remove a dangerous weapons formula from a heavily guarded laboratory.

The plot includes espionage, murder, romance and humour. Many MacLean fans do not consider this to be one of his finer works. It is typical of his later period works, in that while it is quite well plotted (if stretching the bounds of believability), it is simplistically characterized, with dryly sardonic and superbly competent protagonists (particularly Bruno Wildermann, the trapeze artist-cum-secret agent), a ravishingly beautiful and virtually helpless female protagonist, and almost cartoonish Communist antagonists. As in many of his other works, the violence in the action sequences is implied rather than described, with the protagonists showing a marked aversion to killing except when necessary.