猎杀幽灵写手 (2007)

《猎杀幽灵写手》（英语：The Ghost）是畅销英国小说家及记者罗伯特·哈里斯所写的当代政治惊悚小说。2010年，小说被改编成电影《影子写手》，由罗曼·波兰斯基执导，主演是皮尔斯·布鲁斯南。波兰斯基和哈里斯共同编剧。

内容简介

为英国前首相Adam Lang代笔回忆录的前写手Mike McAra意外死亡，留下一份未完成的初稿。回忆录的预付版税高达一千万美金，写手酬劳则有二十五万美金；从未透露名字的幽灵（The Ghost），事业不太顺遂，视这份工作为千载难逢的大好机会。他搬到美国东岸与世隔绝的海边别墅，专心采访与写作。但Lang接受采访时的说辞前后不一，他的说法也无法与文献相印证，回忆录的初稿内容犹如废纸，毫无出版价值。再加上Lang被指控应接受国际法庭审判，Lang的名声全维系在幽灵代笔的回忆录上。

幽灵认为Lang被指控的理由并不单纯，种种线索令他怀疑一切并非巧合，真相隐藏在前任写手所遗留的未完成手稿内，幽灵因此成为下一个被灭口的头号目标。

The Ghost is a 2007 political thriller by the best-selling English novelist and journalist Robert Harris about a professional ghostwriter hired to write the memoirs of a former British prime minister. In 2010, the novel was adapted into a film, The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan, for which Polanski and Harris co-wrote the screenplay.

Plot summary

Most of the plot takes place on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where former British Prime Minister Adam Lang has been holed up in the holiday home of his billionaire American publisher to turn out his memoirs on a deadline. Lang's former aide, Mike McAra, was struggling to ghostwrite Lang's memoirs until he drowned when he apparently fell off the Woods Hole ferry. The fictional narrator of The Ghost, whose name is never given, is hired to replace him. His girlfriend walks out on him over his willingness to take the job: "She felt personally betrayed by him; she used to be a party member", reflecting a wider dissatisfaction over Lang's policies, particularly pertaining to the war on terror. The narrator begins to suspect foul play over McAra's death.

Meanwhile, Lang is accused by his enemies of war crimes. A leaked memorandum has revealed that he secretly approved the capture and the extraordinary rendition of British citizens to Guantanamo Bay to face interrogation and torture, one of whom died. Richard Rycart, Lang's disillusioned and renegade former foreign secretary (loosely based on Robin Cook, although inspired by Michael Heseltine), whose desires to adopt an "ethical" foreign policy and criticism of the hardline Atlanticist views of Lang ensured his sacking. Now at the United Nations, Rycart is in a position to do his former boss serious damage. Lang thus appears in imminent threat of indictment at the International Criminal Court and thus exile in the United States.

The narrator borrows a car previously used by McAra, and following the still-programmed into the satnav, follows his last route to the home of Professor Paul Emmett, who attended Cambridge University with Lang, but Emmett is evasive about any connections. The narrator investigates Emmett and discovers rumours that he is a CIA agent, responsible for foreign recruitment, implying Lang's policies as a result of him being a CIA plant throughout his political career. The narrator discovers Rycart's phone number amongst McAra's things and arranges to meet him in New York. Rycart reveals that he and McAra had concluded Lang was recruited by Emmett into the CIA at Cambridge, and that McAra—before his death—ensured a failsafe would be embedded within the memoir manuscript, "in the beginning".

Confronted by the narrator, Lang claims ignorance of the CIA connection, but is blown up by a British suicide bomber vengeful for Britain's participation in the Iraq War. While recovering, the narrator finishes writing the book. At its launch party, he concludes that Lang's wife Ruth, a Fulbright scholar, was tutored by Emmett. The narrator recalls a remark Lang had made, to the effect of Ruth betraying him, and realizes the opening word of each chapter of McAra's manuscript encode a hidden message: "Langs wife Ruth studying in '76 was recruited as a CIA agent in America by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University". He leaves promptly and types the novel as a confession, to be entrusted to his ex-girlfriend and revealed only upon his demise. With Rycart recently being killed in a seemingly staged accident, he ruminates about his own death and why he allowed himself to be embroiled in the job in the first place.

Reception

The character Adam Lang is a thinly disguised version of Tony Blair. The fictional counterpart of Cherie Blair is depicted as a sinister manipulator of her husband. Harris told The Guardian before publication: "The day this appears a writ might come through the door. But I would doubt it, knowing him".