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Reviews & Comments (For reviews of The Last Days of Las Vegas, please click here.) |
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| "Cryptic as they come, with layers of mystery unfolding gradually, this new spy thriller is really something different: a chess puzzle that teases and entices you on, with loads of action and appropriate amounts of sex. It is not for those who have to have everything spelled out for them right away—the fun here is in figuring out just what the Hungarian Game consists of, as American intelligence agents, a hired killer, an ultra-right-wing millionaire, and a Hungarian secret agent once thought dead all surface near a California ski resort. Who is after whom, and why? Bit by bit we learn, right up to the tough slam-bang finale in which the pieces fit together at last and Remly, the American agent, has to reach a life and death decision regarding the ginger-haired girl with whom he has been having an affair."Publishers Weekly |
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| "A lesson to the reviewer to keep an open mind when proffered apparently typical, overlong, American 'agency' books. This first novel [The Hungarian Game] is untypical: it is gay and clever and exciting, about, on the whole, reasonably pleasant and intelligent people. At the risk of being insulting, one can fairly say it reads British."UK: The Times Literary Supplement, London |
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| "One begins to suspect that these antic dirty tricksters [in The Hungarian Game] are closer to the reality of the intelligence establishment – as exposed by the Watergate hearings – than all of their fictional forebears. But all of this is an afterthought: the novel itself leaves little time for contemplation as it whips the reader along over a sea of frothy witticisms. And the color and detail of the book's Southern California locale are magnificent, reminiscent of Raymond Chandler but brought up to date."Los Angeles Times |
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| "The Hungarian Game by Roy Hayes (Secker & Warburg) is an exciting and highly original American espionage novel."Mr. Hayes is a writer of mordant wit and impressive power."UK: Surrey & Hampshire News |
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| "Hayes' spy is a cross between James Bond and the cynical one who came in from the cold. He likes Havana cigars, big breasts and his Bentley. But he finds his time filled with budgets, little breasts and trying to figure out why a Hungarian official 'killed' during the 1956 revolution is still alive."You know the two paths are going to cross, but Hayes keeps you guessing."Chicago Daily News |
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| "The Hungarian Game is a first novel by Roy Hayes, a lively blend of opulence and bureaucracy, with distinct whiffs of lechery and explosives. The action is swift and the wit is sharp."UK: The Evening Post, Bristol |
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| "Hayes is currently basking in the literary limelight for The Hungarian Game, his first novel."His story is a gripping one, well seasoned with humor, and contains some marvelous technical detail about electronic surveillance devices, a subject of some contemporary interest."San Diego Tribune |
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| "A man who ought to be dead appears at an airport ticketing window, and the unexpected sight is more than enough to make a randy, expenses-fiddling American spy chaser abandon his girl and start a man hunt. Meanwhile, a sinister figure is booking into a luxury hotel in Hollywood and testing his room for bugs before he starts his murderous mission. All good rough fun."UK: Manchester Evening News |
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| "Too often spy novels are so convoluted and complex it?s impossible to tell the Good Guys from the Bad, or even what?s going on. Not so with The Hungarian Game. It?s intricate, tangled, and labyrinthine, but clarity and intelligibility never suffer."This is an extremely clever novel about a manhunt within a manhunt. While both the CIA and Soviet KGB are hunting in Southern California for a Hungarian secret police officer who was supposed to have died in his country's 1956 revolution, the Hungarian is hunting documents which would unmask Red espionage apparatus here and in Europe. Simultaneously, a professional assassin is hunting an aging right-wing American millionaire whose senility and bankroll are being used by the back-from-the-dead Hungarian."Roy Hayes, advertising-executive-turned-storyteller, intertwines all three hunts brilliantly and winds them up in a series of climaxes as smashing as any in contemporary action fiction. To this add an innovative style, irony, wit, strong and offbeat characters and snappy, crackling dialogue."The Hungarian Game is dazzling cloak-and-dagger and catapults its author squarely into the top ranks of thriller writers."Buffalo Evening News |
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| "Hayes' spy and counter-spy characters make the Watergate break-in seem like a Sunday School picnic."Here is intrigue and suspense at its best."Hayes writes with similes which crackle and dialogue that sparkles, and artfully taps the thinking processes of those about to kill or be killed."Los Angeles Herald-Examiner |
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| "One of those fiendishly clever things . . . a puzzle book as well as a spy thriller."Hayes is a funny guy, and it shows through in what he writes."Palo Alto Peninsula Living |
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| "Michael Korda is obviously some kind of genius. As editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster he seems to have an unfailing instinct for best-selling books. Take, for example, the case at hand: Roy Hayes' spy novel, The Hungarian Game, which weaves deftly through sex, violence and espionage calculations that would please James Bond himself."Digby Diehl, Los Angeles Times |
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| "The most exciting espionage novel since the debutes of Len Deighton and John Le Carré, and perhaps the first American book to equal the pace and suspense of those transatlantic masters of the genre."With its fascinating detail of espionage, its sudden flashes of violence, its cynicism and its complex, gradually unfolded, breathtaking plot, The Hungarian Game is one of those rare books that demand to be read in one evening."Michael Korda, editor-in-chief, Simon & Schuster |
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