Strangers on a Bridge

 

Strangers on a Bridge – by James B. Donovan

Before I write about this (rather disappointing) book, I must point out two things. First: Never judge a book by its movie. I’ve stated this before. Some of the best movies have been made from subpar books. “Forrest Gump” comes to mind. To be truthful, I’ve haven’t seen the Stephen Spielberg movie that was based on this book, but I know enough about Spielberg’s reputation to know that it was warmly received, as is typical of most of his works.  The second thing is that I’ve discovered that many books written 50 or 60 years ago don’t deliver the same punch as modern works do.  My guess is that peoples’ attention spans have shortened, and book publishers are well aware of this fact. Therefore, in order for a book to get published today, close scrutiny is involved in making sure the reader stays engaged throughout.  I’m not sure the same criteria existed years ago. This has been true of biographies, works of fiction, non-fiction, and just about everything else that I have sampled.

This book is an account of the arrest and trial of soviet spy Rudolph Abel that happened back in 1957. The author is Abel’s lawyer, James B. Donovan. Contrary to the subtitle of this book, very little attention is paid to the eventual exchange for the downed U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Side note: I would HIGHLY recommend Michael Beschloss’ wonderful telling of that account). This book begins with the author giving a decent background of the times and the relationship with cold war Russia. It was actually interesting for the first 50 pages or so.

The problem here is that the author is essentially regurgitating his diary of his meticulous notes that he took before during and after the trial. In fact, the entire trial is here including much of the back and forth interrogation.  If we’re to be honest, this isn’t typically interesting material. Oh sure, it’s interesting on all of the lawyer tv shows, but real life and real courtroom cases aren’t nearly as captivating, and anyone who has served on a jury for a case that lasted more than two days will tell you that nothing goes as slowly as sitting in a jury box for days at a time. Again, had this book been written within the last quarter-century, I’m sure the editor would have used his or her red pen more often.

This book is told in four chapters. Each chapter a year; from 1957 – 1960. The first year, in which the arrest and trial took place is longer than the other three combined. After the trial concludes, there’s a little bit of detail about the eventual exchange, but not nearly enough. The author seems to somehow feel his readers actually care about what clothes he brings his client to wear during the trial.

It’s really sad that this thing is such a slog. I imagine that with a better author, this could have turned into a much more interesting real-life spy story. Again, I’m willing to bet this is exactly what Stephen Spielberg did.  Strangely, I’m a bit scared and hesitant to watch the film.  I’ll need to make sure to get the bad taste of the book out of my mouth before I do.  Readers should approach “older” books with a bit of caution.