''Who's on First'' is a 1980 American

spy thriller Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligen ...

novel written by

William F. Buckley Jr. William Frank Buckley Jr. (born William Francis Buckley; November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008) was an American public intellectual, conservative author and political commentator. In 1955, he founded ''National Review'', the magazine that stim ...

, the third of eleven novels in the

Blackford Oakes Blackford "Blackie" or "Black" Oakes is a fictional character, a Central Intelligence Agency officer, spy and the protagonist of a series of novels written by William F. Buckley, Jr. Early life Oakes was born in 1925. He served in World War II a ...

series.

Plot

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

agent Blackford Oakes is sent to

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

amid the

Hungarian Uprising of 1956 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * 1980 American novels Blackford Oakes novels Novels set in Hungary Novels set in the 1950s Hungarian Revolution of 1956 fiction Doubleday (publisher) books {{ColdWar-novel-stub