Next from Mick Herron, THE SECRET HOURS, in September

I generally review books pretty close to the publication date -- so if the review intrigues you, you'll be able to get the book soon afterward. As a result, I won't post a full review of THE SECRET HOURS  until later this summer.

But not only are there exceptions to waiting for the right moment. There are reasons for exceptions to self-imposed rules like this one. 

Mick Herron's new book, THE SECRET HOURS, will be released in September. Layered, rich, flavored with political insight, wry humor, espionage of course, and above all, love and loyalty, it's being promoted as a stand-alone spy thriller.

However, this book unfolds many of the secrets that have been lurking in Herron's Slough House series. And it's going to resonate more deeply for you if you've already devoured and at least partly remember what happens to which characters in the series.

So this is your book alert: Buy Mick Herron's series now, or borrow it, or dust off your own copies and spend the summer refreshing your attention to the quirkiest, bravest, most ordinary, most-difficult-to-share-an-office-with spies of Herron's disastrous failure side of MI5. 

You will thus guarantee yourself an astonishingly good time in September.

Which in turn causes me to suggest: Get your spouse and/or best friend reading these, too. Then you'll have the ultimate pleasure of sharing a fantastic book with the person you most like. Couldn't get much better than that.

Oh yes, the books you are about to buy, borrow, or dust off (lucky you!) are:

1. Slow Horses (2010)
2. Deal Lions (2013)
3. Real Tigers (2016)
4. Spook Street (2017)
5. London Rules (2018)
6. Joe Country (2019)
7. Slough House (2021) 
8. Bad Actors (2022) 

And you can see a lot of them reviewed on this site by clicking here. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Cold War Espionage, MOSCOW EXILE from John Lawton (Both Joe Wilderness and Lord Troy)

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage.”

 

Moscow Exile is offered as a “Joe Wilderness Novel,” the fourth in John Lawton’s international espionage series. Aside from a cryptic prologue set in 1969, though, Joe Wilderness is conspicuously absent from this lush historic novel until nearly 300 pages in.

 

That still gives Joe plenty of work space, though, since Lawton’s model for this work might as well have been a classic Russian novel, lengthy and rich with generations of conflict, wealth, and fractured loyalties. And there’s no need to rush: Moscow Exile offers a bitter promenade through the Red Scare years of American politics and the malicious maneuvering of the Senator who in real life was Joseph McCarthy —here, Robert Redmaine, sleazy and powerful, tearing apart Hollywood’s professionals with accusations of anti-American affiliations.

 

Making the novel even more delicious for fans of Lawton’s British Inspector Troy investigation thrillers, Troy and his politically potent brother slide directly into the story, as the British leadership—especially via MI5 and MI6—attempts to shape its Iron Curtain diplomacy.

 

The heart of Moscow Exile is an alliance between a British spy who’s actually working for Moscow—the elegant Charlie Leigh-Hunt—and a far cleverer and beautiful woman, Charlotte (aka Cokey) Shumacher, also working for “the Reds,” for different reasons. Lawton provides many sexual liaisons for the pair (such a relief to read untwisted sexuality, despite the international betrayal going on) and demonstrates how direct international espionage can be. It would be nice to think that the America of the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t really infiltrated this way. But for Charlie and Charlotte, with specific reasons to prefer “anyone but Britain” handling world leadership, spying comes easily and with lower risks than expected.

 

An ”ordinary” espionage novel would make sure that those betraying America and Britain to Russia/the Soviet Union would pay a deadly price. Lawton offers a mirror inversion instead: Secrets, seduction, and certainty fuel a path to safety behind the Iron Curtain. Only Joe Wilderness, with the Troy brothers oddly interconnected to him, sees clearly what Soviet ideology means for Moscow.

 

Oddly, Moscow Exile lays out reasons that people chose on behalf of global Communism and active socialism, and those characters who sustain their loyalty to related ideals somehow manage to escape deadly failure. This “Russian novel” hosts an unusual morality that places loyalty—to whatever cause—and generous friendship together as allies, so that even a politically crooked philanderer can become heroic in his or her way.

 

That allows Joe Wilderness, with his plain British loyalty and willingness to be used as a pawn in a spy swap, to sit on the outskirts of this hefty book. Instead, Coky Schumacher demonstrates how an unsuspected wife of a half-mad politician can protect the Soviet side. She spells it out for Charlie: “Why, you think it happenstance that Bob chooses the innocent and harmless to grill? I steer him away from the real Communists.” She also details the moral quagmire of creepy politicos like her Senator husband: “The amazing thing about Red-baiting is that he’s stuck with it. I think he was on a quest to find out what would win, and if it turned out to be right-wing, racist, paranoid bigotry, so be it. That is the mask he has adopted,” she explains. And when Charlie gets her point and suggests, “We might become what we pretend to be,” Coky provides a blunt summary: “We are what we pretend to be … and in that is a lesson for us both, Charlie-boy.”

 

Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage: calculating, well-armed, self-defined. The irony of Moscow Exile is that those with undivided loyalty in the novel—the Troy brothers, Lord Troy’s wife Anna, and Joe himself—occupy only “bit parts” that require swift decisions and able allies.

 

On the other hand, the true villain of the book, Senator Redmaine, bears a strong resemblance to some of today’s political rising stars. “And that is a lesson for us both,” as Coky would point out.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

New Espionage Fiction in the Top Tier, JUDAS 62 from Charles Cumming

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Cumming effectively ramps up suspense, in this hefty page-turner revelatory of modern espionage’s methods. “

 

If the arc of history is long and bends toward justice, what about the arc of espionage? Is there an inevitable personal price to pay for the lies and wounds of a past career deceiving others politically across the globe? For lifelong spy Lachlan Kite, now director of a secret counterintelligence unit in the United Kingdom, the dead enemies of the past seem to rise up and walk again, when he finds his name on a Russian kill list. But do the enemies who have put his long-ago alias onto the JUDAS 62 list know who he really is?

 

British author Charles Cumming is reliably accurate in assigning capacities for data gathering, manipulation, and plotting to his teams, whether Western or Russian; writing from his own brief experience in the UK’s MI6 and abundant research since then, he adds a fine sense of human frailty and predictable betrayal to his plots. In JUDAS 62, Lachlan Kite’s early attachments and struggles from his first foreign assignment demonstrate how close he, or any such operative, comes to failing. For Kite, this is due to his underestimation of the enemy and naive willingness to defy authority. Though his overall mission at the time may succeed, the death of a scientist linked to the one he brought out from Russian control signals that almost all may now be laid bare—and Kite may pay with his life.

 

Much of the action takes place in Russia, caught up in complications of mixed loyalties. Taking time to paint all the details, with an overall novel length of about 500 pages, Cumming leads Kite to create a potential trap for his enemy. First, of course, he has to come to terms with his new vulnerability:

 

“The Aranov operation had cost Kite a great deal, personally and professionally. Peter Galvin was an almost-forgotten name from his past. Now the legend was again in circulation. It had taken him twenty-seven years, but Mikhail Gromik was finally ready to come after him. … ‘I’m perfectly safe,’ Kite replied, though he did not believe this. The idea that he was vulnerable to Gromik and to the scum who had murdered Evgeny was abohorrent to him. ‘They’re not going to come knocking on my door.’ Mahsood looked as unconvinced by this as Kite might have expected. They both knew he was on shaky ground.”

 

When the plot to trap the hunters and remove the target from Kite’s back—and from the backs of his colleagues—develops, it requires delicate manipulation of viewpoints of the former rescued scientist, the Russians on the hunt, and Kite’s own colleagues. Most dangerously, the trap must be executed in Dubai. So many things can, and do, go wrong.

 

Cumming effectively ramps up suspense in this hefty page-turner revelatory of modern espionage’s methods. Every move must be successfully choreographed … or countered. Lock your door, set the phone on “silent,” and prioritize: Keep reading, and watch for the moment when a very sophisticated “honey trap” clicks into place, and Aranov thanks a thoughtful man in a restaurant who pumps his hand and says, “This is my girlfriend, Sally Tarshish, and our good friend, Natalia. Are you hear in Dubai for business or pleasure?”

 

This is the second in a series from Cumming; the first was BOX 88. No need to read it before JUDAS 62, but the two are firmly linked. Contemporary and tightly plotted, this new pair makes an excellent addition to the espionage fiction collection. 

 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

 

BAD ACTORS, Sardonic and Delightful Espionage from Mick Herron

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

 “Herron’s plot is packed with twists and delightfully sardonic conversations, and the book’s only major flaw is that at some point it ends, and one must resume normal life.”

It’s hard to miss the promotion on television and online for “Slow Horses,” as the earliest in Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels jumps genre into an Apple TV+ show featuring Gary Oldman. But Bad Actors, eighth in the series, has no connection to performance, despite the title that might immediately pop a stage into the back of an American reader’s mind.

It turns out that the British term “bad actor” means a person who’s done things that are harmful, illegal, or immoral. Herron’s Slough House is a discard group for MI5 spies who’ve messed up and now get tedious assignments sorting through social media or phone books or worse. Every spy assigned there—dustbinned might be a good term to add—knows they’ve made a mess somewhere in their recent past, and they won’t be allowed back into the Park, the office of really performing agents, ever again.

Well, unless you count Ashley Khan. Quite young and still deluding herself that the infamous Diana Taverner will take her back into important operations, Ashley is also obsessed with the source of her demotion: Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House. On a recent assignment, Lamb caught her following one of his spies. They may be (they are) all failures, but still, they are his, and he doesn’t allow anyone to mess with them (much). So he’d broken Ashley’s arm and sent her back to Taverner, whose acid response was, “You broke her, you own her.” Back to Slough House she went.

Since Ashley is as paranoid as any other spy, and clueless as well, she’s baffled by the interactions around her in Slough House. While she obsesses on punishing Lamb, the team is actually in crisis mode. Cokehead Shirley Dander’s been send to a sanitarium to dry out; narcissist Roddy Ho is creating avatar girlfriends for himself as a distraction; River Cartwright, the most potentially sane of the Slough House discards, isn’t even around, presumed dead or permanently missing.

And like Ashley, most readers will rush a third of the way into the book, at least, before confirming that almost all the machinations taking place have Jackson Lamb behind them. One could certainly be excused for not looking at Lamb—between his predictably terrible farts, his smoking and spitting, and his disgustingly soiled clothing and office, he’s both camouflaged and repellent. But he’s also brilliant, and much sharper, it turns out, than Diana Taverner herself.

Thanks to adept storytelling, readers are aware before Lamb (or is that impossible?) that ex-spy Claude Whelan, a tool in use by Taverner, is muddying all possible waters with a notion of payback on Lamb, and he’s more effective than young Ashley:

Where did Whelan’s loyalties lie? Not with either side. Not with any bad actor, whether in the Service he’s led or the government he’d served. … It still rankled, his fall from grace, and why shouldn’t he take some matter of revenge? It wasn’t really him, he knew that. He was nobody’s idea of an avenging knight. But wasn’t it time for a change.

Soon dominoes are tumbling in various directions, only Lamb really knows their triggers, and as a savior of anyone or anything, Lamb’s even less likely than Claude Whelan. The fun (and poignant bonding) of Bad Actors lies in watching all the others, at Slough House and beyond, gradually realize that only Lamb’s irreverent demands and plans are likely to get them out of a mess that’s so absurd, so wracked with capers and collapses, then even Claude Whelan will say he can’t tear his eyes away.

Herron’s plot is packed with twists and delightfully sardonic conversations, and the book’s only major flaw is that at some point it ends, and one must resume normal life. But there may be a flavor of wicked humor remaining in what one does afterward—along with great satisfaction at what Lamb and the “Slow Horses” pull out of their grubby, out-of-fashion hats.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Fierce Debut Crime Novel from Chris Power, A LONELY MAN

When you look up British author Chris Power online, you find his literary criticism for The Guardian, and his short story collection Mothers. Maybe the noted story collection marked many perceptions of his new crime novel, A LONELY MAN—because his publisher uses terms like "existential" and "elegant literary thriller" to describe the work.

Actually, it's a gritty and intense thriller set in Berlin, with an all-too-believable premise: Robert, a writer with a devastating case of writer's block, casually meets another author, the rather drunk and miserable Patrick. When Patrick gets himself into a public fist fight and Robert and his wife intervene, the two men set a follow-up get-together. The conversation isn't exactly what you'd expect from a pair of writers getting together:

'You were telling me how you made your fortune writing this oligarch's memoirs,' Robert said.

'My fortune, yeah. Well, it fell apart.'

'Why?'

'Vanyashin died. Last year.'

'How?'

'The inquest said suicide,' Patrick said. 'Just announced it, in fact. The coroner gave his verdict last week.'

But Patrick claims it wasn't suicide. He's so drunk, and such an obvious mess, that Robert has no problem laughing this off, and calling Patrick suicide. Russian oligarch, dead of suicide -- anything else is clearly product of an overactive, alcohol-fueled imagination. But he might as well use this amusing paranoia in his new author buddy as fuel for jump-starting his own fiction. Right?

Well, maybe not so right. While evidence piles up around him, Robert keeps labeling his sightings of people following him, or Patrick, as imagination, but with more edge, more underlying terror. And when his family comes under threat, his worst imaginings aren't equal to the risks.

A tightly knitted, sharply paced espionage/crime novel, A LONELY MAN is well worth devouring. Berlin never looked so much like, well, any large city you too might walk into, looking for a story worth telling. Readers beware: The presence of friendship and affection does not guarantee everything will work out -- especially when danger's already been pushed aside for so long.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Espionage and Insight in Northern Ireland, in NORTHERN SPY from Flynn Berry

 

[Originally at New York Journal of Books]

“Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same.”

Unashamedly focused on loving and savoring her six-month-old son Finn while also working as a news producer, Tessa Daly can’t believe it when the police claim her sister Marian has joined the IRA. Though the enduring aftermath of the Troubles marks every day for Tessa, her mother, her child, and yes, her sister, it’s impossible that their lives in Northern Ireland could become militarized and criminalized in this way.

Until, somehow, it isn’t. Whether her sister’s a sort of hero for fighting against the government forces, or somehow playing a “doubles” game to move both sides toward peace, Tessa needs to know which choices are right and necessary. And whatever her own position becomes, she’s got to protect her baby first, and Marian second.

Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same. Taut and passionate, it’s a plot-driven and morally demanding narrative full of threat and heartbreak. The fiercely portrayed reality of life in a divided land and the costly choices everyone faces make this into a page-turner. Berry also excels at keeping her protagonists smart and even wise—so when things do go wrong, it’s not because of foolish mistakes.

Most importantly Tessa holds her focus:

“I wonder, would a good mother take Finn away from this place, or keep him close to his father? Would a good mother work for peace, or stay away from the conflict? Would a good mother be preoccupied with terrorism during every minute she has spent with her son this week?

I don’t want my son to have to forgive me for anything, but I can’t even tell what that might be, so how can I avoid it? … I want someone to tell me what to do. If we can stay or if we need to leave tonight, right away, the sooner the better.”

By staying in place, and maintaining loyalty to her family, Tessa’s soon a person of interest herself. The detective chasing the terrorists makes that clear: “He shakes his keys in his suit pocket, then fixes his gaze on me. ‘Tessa, what does nitrobenzene smell like?’ I blink at him. ‘I have no idea.’ Fenton considers me for a few long moments, the turns to go. He knows I’ve just lied. Nitrobenzene smells like marzipan.”

Northern Spy will be a hit for readers of Dublin noir and tartan noir, as well as those who’ve already discovered Stuart Neville’s Belfast noir with its grit and darkness. But because Berry opts to view the pain and violence through a young mother’s eyes, there’s less in-your-face blood and guts, and perhaps more agony in spite of that. Denise Mina and Tana French readers can also find familiar ground—but so in fact can any readers who treasure a well-plotted mystery with a powerful sense of how place and the near past can force a person to cross the lines they once felt were sacred.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Freshly Spying Out the Cold War, in Tense New Espionage from Paul Vidich, THE MERCENARY

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Vidich carries the wintry mood of Soviet menace and danger powerfully, and his plot twists are tight and all too believable. “

The third espionage novel from Paul Vidich, The Mercenary, slides back to six years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moscow provided a frightening standoff of Soviets and Americans, and the notion of an American president being a “friend” of a Soviet leader couldn’t even be considered as a political move. With George Mueller, a CIA agent rolling out of the embassy and into a late-in-life mission to meet a new Russian spy, the moment is all about rational fear and determination.

But Mueller’s nighttime adventure hits a swift end in police hands, betrayed somehow, and when the Soviet source comes back into contact with the “Agency,” that person has one unconditional demand: that the new American case officer drawn in to connect with him in the future be Aleksander Garin.

Garin is the “mercenary” of the book’s title. Burned by a betrayed operation of his own on Soviet ground, when he’d lost the life of the general he was trying to assist out to freedom, he’s retreated to a New York City life of increasing despair and loss, taking short assignments that he can’t explain to his wife, with little continuity or satisfaction. The call to the new assignment arrives when he has nothing else to hold him. So he lands back in a nation he’d never expected to see again.

“Garin didn’t talk on the drive in. … There was something illusory about time and space that in the moment made him feel as if he’d never left the Soviet Union. The low visibility darkened his mood and reminded him of the morning he’d been forced to flee. It haunted him that he hadn’t seen, or chose to ignore, the obvious dangers. … Nothing has changed, he thought. But things were different. He was older, with a scar on his neck, another name, and a new assignment.”

Garin’s return to the Soviet Union is by definition perilous, with all the odds against him. His own identity as some sort of Russian himself will slowly unfold over the course of his mission—but there’s no question that somewhere in the Soviet files, his image and story are well documented, and he’s in danger from this moment on, in Moscow.

Vidich carries the wintry mood of Soviet menace and danger powerfully, and his plot twists are tight and all too believable. Garin’s forced progress from one crisis to the next reveals much more than his Russian self and his past failure, however: The new “source” has asked for Garin not by name, but as the person who’d failed to get the general out. The forced play is intended to dig into Garin’s own self-image and presumed longing to redeem himself, after such a colossal failure. His new contact, “Gambit,” is counting on Garin to get things right this time. Redemption.

But espionage is a landscape where nothing’s likely to be or go right. Everyone involved knows this. George Mueller himself struggles to protect Garin from the self-serving manipulations of his own “side,” while the KGB maneuvers to find out who’s now leaking secrets to the Americans, and to make sure there are no long-term rewards for such actions.

For readers new to espionage and to the climate of the dangerous Cold War, Vidich’s book provides a fast-moving and emotionally powerful ride into the darkness of both spying and the battered soul. The book’s effect on seasoned readers in this genre may be very different, however, since two questions insist on being addressed: Why title the book The Mercenary when, even from Aleksander Garin’s first step on Soviet soil, it’s clear he’s engaged for far different motives than money? (Is there a true mercenary anywhere in this book?) And second, inescapably, why has Vidich named his protagonist “Alek” when the book’s closest parallel is The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the John Le Carré classic that lures Alec Leamas into tragedy?

Ultimately, the deepest and most painful conflict in The Mercenary becomes whether Alek Garin must meet the same ending as Alec Leamas. Vidich holds the issue in fierce suspense all the way through this standalone thriller. 

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

SLOUGH HOUSE: Mick Herron's 7th Tongue-in-Cheek London Spy Novel

If you live with other people, or have members of your pod stopping by while you're reading, you might want to warn them that you'll be reading the next Mick Herron "slow horses" espionage delight — the people in my living space kept showing up with the bewildered question, "You're reading a spy novel and you're laughing out loud??"

SLOUGH HOUSE builds on the escapades and character revelations of the previous books, and it's even funnier and, ironically, more heart-breaking if you've read the other titles (Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules, and Joe Country). But it's still an excellent and compelling read if you plunge into it as your first visit to "Slough House," the building and department where MI5 dumps its staff failures. An alcoholic, a dance-crazy coke addict, a brilliant hacker with an ardent fantasy life involving how "hot" he is, a despairing staffer who'd been framed for pedophilia (guess how fast his fiancée left him), and the espionage-born-and-bred River Cartwright himself, in some ways the straight man among these various delightful nut cases. Most of all, the department circles around its head of operations, Jackson Lamb, a deceptively fat and farting slob whose skills in espionage, sorting out international intrigue, and even attacking the opposition physically are far better than those of his treacherous superior, Diana Taverner.

Here's a classic moment as the team waits for Lamb to show at a planned meeting:

A door banged, not the one from the yard, but the toilet on the floor below. So Lamb had floated in and up several flights of stairs without fluttering a cobweb on the way. It was unnerving to picture him doing this, like imagining a tapir playing hopscotch. The smell of stale cigarettes entered the room a moment before him, and the slow horses made way for it, then Lamb, by shuffling to either side. He arrived among them shaking his head in wonderment. "What a dump."

... He threw himself into his chair, which, one happy day, was going to respond by disintegrating into a hundred pieces. "Sorry to keep you waiting. I was up late comforting a gay American dwarf."

It's quickly evident that only Lamb, despite his crude language and behavior, would have noticed and listened to the story of that American, who had showed up unexpectedly in a room full of ex-spies who were saying goodbye to an old-time espionage meeting place being closed down.

That attentiveness to small details that in fact reveal Russian operations in Britain is half of what Lamb excels at; the other important half is the way he shepherds his group of failed spies, people who can't be easily fired because they know too much, but can be corralled where they may not hurt serious business. Lamb's robust verbal abuse and bluntness feel humiliating, but also give the staff a focus beyond their own misery. 

Besides, Diana Taverner, head of MI5, has already done something far more humiliating to the "slow horses" department: set them up as targets for her own spies-in-training. Her mistake here is underestimating how far Lamb will go in response, to defend his bizarre team. But she's got problems, and would be the first to admit it: For Diana, "it turned out that the actual cost of having someone whacked remained one of those subjects too embarrassing to discuss in public, so that wasn't subjected to intense scrutiny either." And having set this up, funded by political forces she's misunderstood, Diana is in a serious mess ... and trying to pass the dirt downhill to Jackson Lamb's department. As she soon discovers, "that was the thing about shit, real or fake: once you'd begun spreading it about, it never ended up precisely where you wanted it."

Herron's espionage is highly realistic and well salted with views of the ridiculous — expect sudden guffaws or long laughs. (Good treatment for pandemic-induced depression.) Ironically or inevitably, it's also strung around some bizarre forms of love and loyalty in action. Plus Herron provides a crystal-clear view of modern British politics and even the American disaster. All of this makes SLOUGH HOUSE far more than a good read. It's worth reading twice, shelving, and pulling out again a few months later. Where else are you going to have so much fun while isolated and waiting for your vaccine? (Don't answer that. Listen to Jackson Lamb instead.)

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Love, War, and Espionage, in THE DOCTOR OF ALEPPO from Dan Mayland

Dan Mayland's Mark Sava "spy novels" gave him a solid platform of plot-centered espionage fiction to write from. But his 2020 novel, released August 11, takes him well beyond expected forms, into a tale of a Syrian doctor and an American woman whose commitments to justice turn their lives inside out.

Dr. Samir Hasan, an orthopedic surgeon in Aleppo, Syria, already walks the ragged edge of political danger: He has family members who oppose the ruler of the nation, Bashar al-Assad, and in 2012, in the third phase of Syria's civil war, to take care of his relatives is treason. But how can he refuse? Even so, the hours he spends beyond his hospital work, patching up injured protesters, puts his wife and children into a more direct jeopardy, since he's no longer home for enough hours to protect them from the erupting conflict. Warriors for Allah, the soldiers begin to interfere with the doctor's son ... and then, inevitably, his wife.

Crossing paths with this doctor is an American woman, Hannah Johnson, who needs his care for her wounded Swedish lover. Hannah's working with humanitarian relief, ferrying medications and other hospital supplies to the beleaguered occupants of the city. A further accident, at the hospital, places Dr. Hasan—Sami—and the American woman into jeopardy as the son of a secret police official unexpectedly dies in the care of this hard-hit hospital.

Neither can continue as they have been. For Sami, the change is most terrible: To gain protection for his family, he seeks help through his dangerously rebellious sister-in-law:

"Your protester friends—yes, I know you are one of them—some of them have connections to the Free Syrian Army, I assume?"

"I do not need to hear your accusations now, Sami."

"I am not accusing you. I ask because I need your help."

"What help?"

"I need for you to take a message to the Free Syrian Army—to tell them that I am willing to work for them. Heal their wounded and train their medics. But in exchange, Beit Qarah [his home] and my family will be protected."

For Hannah, betrayal reaches her personally: The boyfriend she assisted not only leaves the country without her, but turns out to have a "regular" girlfriend at home, one he's lined up to marry. She feels like a fool. But that doesn't stop her commitment to making the runs with humanitarian aid, even though she keeps fooling herself into thinking she'll stop at some point.

The twists of war reconnect her to Dr. Samir Hasan in new ways, circling more around his children and their need for protection than any other reasoning. But Hannah has crossed the line into a culture far different from what she understands, and her efforts to again try to save individuals may cost her far more than she expects to pay. Because the secret police officer has linked her with the doctor who failed to save his son—who perhaps actually killed his son—and Rahim has never stopped searching:

At times there had been leads. In January she had been seen passing through a checkpoint in Bustan al-Qasr, in May through a checkpoint in Sheik Saeed. But her schedule was seemingly random, and when she had been observed, the people doing the observing had been unable to pursue her without exposing themselves as regime spies.

Until yesterday.

This is an ambitious book spanning the years from 2012 to 2016. It offers readers an entry into both a period of history and a set of intersecting cultures, by playing out the tension within the middle and upper classes in Lebanon, where history's challenges linger, and art and literature are as important as religion, or more so. In this season after an epic explosion in Beirut, in neighboring Lebanon, followed by a change of government there, THE DOCTOR OF ALEPPO offers an intriguing and page-turning route into understanding more of this region's roots in terror, passion, and the value of ordinary human loyalties. 

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

American Espionage Deepens, with THE COLDEST WARRIOR from Paul Vidich

[Originally published at the New York Journal of Books]

There are two special pleasures for a book reviewer: to spot a stirring talent with the first published book from an author, and to see an author's skills and passion ripen during further work. If you savor a well-turned novel of espionage and moral challenges, THE COLDEST WARRIOR, the third book of espionage fiction from New Yorker Paul Vidich, belongs on your shelf.

Here's the premise: Readers know from the first chapter that Dr. Charles Wilson, a scientist in a high-security government program, became a major security risk in 1953 and was, ahem, enabled to take a plunge from a hotel window high enough above the Washington, DC, streets to kill him at once. But when CIA agent Jack Gabriel approaches retirement from the Office of Inspector General in 1975, twenty-two years later, he's tagged by his superiors to exhume the case and determine what role the Agency played in the death.

Vidich rarely gives much description of a scene or personal appearance, but sketches the interior of a character -- and all his significant ones are men -- deftly and sharply. Jack Gabriel's been drawn to his work by the "cerebral challenge" and the complex problems coupled to high adventure and an urge to fight "the great Cold War against Communism." But his choices are also based in deeper rhythms of moral character:

The call to worldly action had been planted in him by a mother who pushed him to excel in school, who did everything in her power to have him see opportunity beyond the small Midwestern town she hated. ... When young Gabriel arrived in New Haven [for college], he carried a bundle of hundred-dollar bills she had pressed into his hand, a fondness for Shakespeare, an affinity for his mother's Socialism, and a deep skepticism of the rituals of the Catholic Church. The world, he'd been taught to believe, was a dangerous place.

That's a very typical sample of Vidich's writing style, where disclosure comes more from the author's revelatory passages, and less from the situations playing out. In that sense, this author's style differs greatly from the classic work of John Le Carré, who reveals George Smiley's driving forces through his unexpected efforts on behalf of small people: a Russian emigré living in poor housing, a petty criminal who'd lost his beloved to a political betrayal, a retired police officer raising bees. Vidich also walks a very different journey from Olen Steinhauer, whose protagonists bleed from long-ago inner wounds and must rise above their understandable frailty when confronted by political evil-doing.

And the first few chapters of THE COLDEST WARRIOR aren't the greatest quality -- whether from overworking, or hasty rearrangement, or careless editing, it's impossible to know. Yet Vidich soon blooms with powerful moments and short snippets of insight that cut deep: Of one of the antiheroes in this thriller, Phillip Treacher, Vidich exposes Treacher's despair over his relationship with his wife by writing, "He was aware of the first lie he'd told her that Thanksgiving long ago. That deception had metastasized in his soul. He felt more alone than ever."

The halls of power in Washington, DC, shook in the 1970s from Presidential disasters like John F. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco, Richard Nixon's Watergate lies and brutality, and the casual use of the CIA to topple international figures. All of this comes through in THE COLDEST WARRIOR, as the threats around Jack Gabriel mount and writhe. The book spins quickly into risk and danger, and the final chapters, fast-paced and dark with threat, provide one of the best manhunt and intended escape sequences of current espionage fiction. One could quibble with the very last scene, a bit soft for a book of such terse "noirish" narrative -- but the heart of the book is so good that it's an important one to grab, read, shelve, and think about. What other moments in our nation's political past may metastasize in its soul? How about in its present season?

Pegasus, part of Norton, published THE COLDEST WARRIOR and released it in February. And of course, this is the year when fine books will falter, due to social distancing and the hum of anxiety across the globe. So order a copy, through a local bookstore's "curbside delivery" or online. You'll want the satisfaction of having read Paul Vidich's work now, when he rises toward the top of this field later.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

The Best Cara Black Yet: Solid Suspense in THREE HOURS IN PARIS

Once in a blue moon, an author leaps from one genre or segment of writing, into another. And either it's an epic fail -- or it's WOW! Cara Black just made the WOW leap, in switching from her well-loved but long (and increasingly predictable) series featuring stylish Parisian detective Aimée Leduc, into a tremendous espionage thriller.

So if you only love Aimée and her struggles to purchase designer clothing in thrift shops while juggling her newborn baby and a couple of love interests -- well, nobody's going to force you to try THREE HOURS IN PARIS (Soho Crime, April 7 release). But you'll be missing a lot if you skip the transition. And new readers will find this book immaculately plotted, riveting in suspense, packed with unforgettable characters, and opening a chunk of historical Paris that's often forgotten: the three hours that Adolf Hitler spent in the City of Light, as it fell into Nazi hands in June 1940.

The story opens with an instant in the fingers, eyes, and heart of Kate Rees, a young American/British woman hidden in a dome in Paris, waiting for her moment to compress a rifle trigger and assassinate the German leader. The only reason she fails to do so -- she's a heck of a sharpshooter -- is the presence of an unexpected person on the steps in her sights: the one kind of person sure to shatter her composure and steal from her the precious seconds her task demands.

And then, in a flurry of pages, we're back eight months, in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, learning why Kate's reached this critical moment in an occupied city, in a land where she doesn't belong. Only the harsh events of war can move a person as sharply as Kate's moved in the following hours, days, weeks, speeding toward becoming a secret military assassin.

Her deep wounds, her grief and anger, make complete sense. What doesn't make sense, really, is how she gets recruited for the task. But Kate's in no position to think logically about that, even though readers will get a hint of what's happening behind her back -- and may feel almost as enraged on Kate's own behalf. But most of the time, the action of this well-written, fast-paced thriller distracts even a careful reader from the hidden plots-within-plots that seem destined to wound Kate again, as she risks her life:

Kate's blouse stuck to her back and her breath came in pants as she kept walking. Only a few more stairs until she reached rue Muller. She felt warm air rush past her ears, raise the hair on her neck as footsteps thudded on the stairs behind her. Any moment she expected her arm would be seized.

Then German soldiers were rushing up from behind and past her.

"Halt!"

Just ahead on rue Muller the melon seller looked up, terror in his eyes.

A moment later he was surrounded ... Kate averted her gaze and kept to the wall. Bile rose in her stomach. She tied to block out the man's yells, which raked like nails across her skin. She wanted to reassemble the rifle and pick the brutes off one by one. A car bearing small swastika flags mounted on either side of the hood squealed to a stop on rue Muller. The doors opened and the old man was pulled inside.

Too late.

Keep moving.

Yes,  it's that fierce, all the way through. Next, of course, based on Black's past series, comes the question -- is this the launch of a new series? The final scene doesn't suggest it. But the date, 1940, leaves plenty of occupied Paris ahead. Could it be? If yes -- sign me up for more.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. (But if you're specifically looking for earlier Cara Black reviews, click here as a shortcut.)

Do You Like Your Espionage Icy or Warm? Check out JOE COUNTRY by Mick Herron

Mick Herron's Slough House espionage novels come along mostly as an annual series now, with occasional diversions into standalone works and novellas and such. JOE COUNTRY is the sixth full-length novel in the set that opened with Slough Horses, where the ever-farting and outwardly vulgar Jackson Lamb corrals the failures of Britain's government-run system: the men and women who've committed mistakes so glaring or costly (or stupid) that they can't be allowed back in the saddle, yet can't be simply fired either, since they know too darned much. Hence Lamb verbally abuses and embarrasses them while giving them small tasks to keep them out of trouble.

But readers of the series know that some of what's put the "slough horses" into this corral has been bad luck or someone else's successful venial plot. Or love. Or grief. So from time to time, Jackson Lamb sends his crew out to actually accomplish something in "joe country": the landscape of where the working spy, aka the "joe," struggles to undermine the forces of evil and somehow stay alive.

In John Le Carré's classic espionage series, George Smiley's drive is not really love or protectiveness, but an ardent belief in honor that can only be justified if he can make the scales around him come into balance. To do that, he has to pay attention to and care about the small people being run over by the government and espionage ("church and spy") maneuvers and sacrifice plays.

Herron gives a very different set of characters, only one of whom might fit into Smiley's honorable world: River Cartwright, grandson and espionage heir of the O.B. (Old Bast***). But as JOE COUNTRY gets underway, River's grandfather is dying, not going to outlast the day.

He had thought about calling his mother, but for no longer than it took to shake his head. Then he'd willed himself up and into yesterday's clothes, arriving at Skylarks, the nursing home, before the sun. His grandfather had been moved into a room that was purpose-built to die in, though nobody actually said so. The lighting was gentle, and the view through the window of winter hills, their treeline a skeleton chorus. The bed the O.B. would never leave was a clinical, robust device, with upright panels to prevent him from rolling off, and various machines monitoring his progress. On one, his pulse echoed, a signal tapping out from a wavering source. A last border crossing, thought River. His grandfather was entering joe country.

River's deep solitude of the soul, and his bitter state of mourning, were in place long before his grandfather began to fail. But they're not a symbol for the state of England (or Britain); they're an honest assessment of his world and his provoked failures in it, as well as the violence of joe country itself. Each of the others who accompany River in Lamb's entourage is broken in some way, some of the ways more entertaining than others—it can be a hoot to see Roderick Ho lasciviously spy on random women and think he's a hot ticket, while it's desperately sad to walk with Catherine Standish as she flirts with destroying herself alcoholically ... only holding back in order to either punish or rescue Lamb (pick any two).

Meanwhile, the Park—that is, the formally surviving manor of espionage where the pay and the politics both serve as honed blades—aims to destroy Lamb and his entourage. Fortunately, Lamb's not just tricky and malicious (and much smarter than his opponents): He's discovered a dangerous foreign agent manipulating the top brass and knows how to use that to ensure protection for his game.

It's Catherine Standish, despite her vulnerability, who takes in the whole scope of the mess at last. "She had to remind herself, maybe for the millionth time, that this was the world she lived in; that Spook Street wasn't all boring reports in manila folders. That joe country lay around the corner."

The twists and wicked humor in JOE COUNTRY, combined with the odd forms of loyalty embedded in the operations underway, make it a classic. Shelve it. Mark for re-reading. (I have.)

Do you need to read the others in the series first? I always want to say no, but ... tell you what, pick any of the preceding titles (Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules) and read that one first. Then JOE COUNTRY will feel twice as satisfying.

But no matter which route you take, when you finish this book, make room for the other Mick Herron titles on the same shelf. They deserve the space, including in the heart.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Olen Steinhauer, THE LAST TOURIST, March 2020 Release

Olen Steinhauer's penetrating anti-spy espionage book The Tourist was published in 2009; for his March 2020 title, he's chosen THE LAST TOURIST. Like his other titles, this one can be read in several vital ways -- as announcing the last in his "Tourist" books, for instance, or as a label for Milo Weaver himself, struggling stepfather and agency-organized murderer with mega regrets. The group he worked for was called the Department of Tourism, and it tackled adjusting the global balance of power, one daring and highly illegal exploit at a time.

In the opening section of THE LAST TOURIST, however, it's not Milo's point of view we're sharing, but that of the very naive CIA desk jockey Abdul Ghali. To his astonishment, this young American whose first language is a special Arab dialect is summoned from his desk to fly to North Africa and interview Milo Weaver -- someone he's never heard of. But the CIA issues Abdul a specific set of questions to ask the notorious former "Tourist," and off he goes. Even Abdul has to wonder whether he's been chosen for the task because he is, ahem, expendable.

The shock took a while to fade. The idea that the Agency considered me expendable, yes, but more than that I couldn't shake the image of Collins, tosssed against that stone wall, the way his head had lost its form. His broken body stuck with me as we drove north, into the wide black desert that had been a home to my people, but to me looked like the antithesis of home, a terrain that left nowhere to hide.

On the other hand, Milo's transformation from authorized criminal of the Department of Tourism has led to his developing a very different organization, entirely information based: The Library. And Abdul's presence is quickly enmeshed in the issues of who's gunning for The Library now, and whether the attack is survivable — for Abdul, for Milo, for the information network itself.

Steinhauer's fast-paced thriller is based squarely in "today," including the current US presidential administration. He works from two directions: the awkward moral choices and deepening of Milo himself (and incidentally Abdul, much though he hates the notion), and an outrageous proposal about the nature of our time.

In terms of Milo, here's how I described this conflicted spy-on-spies back in 2012, when the original Tourist trilogy was completed:

The trouble is, Milo Weaver, like George Smiley, is one of those people who feels "responsible." In spite of having done some terrible things, he's mostly done them when directly ordered to do so, and he's the sort of spy who'd somehow try to make things right for people he's hurt by accident. So when people he cares about are threatened, and he's the only one who can take action, he's got little choice in his moral calculus: He's got to go back undercover.

In fact, Milo in later life is far further undercover than ever ... and managing a massive information network that engages a dozen nations and uses the effort of balancing their databases as a way to damp down conflict and disaster. With his sister Alexandra, he's held the group together so far, but with his power and control come regular attacks, and the group itself is a prime source of those! So, can he (1) maneuver around the latest effort to depose him and capsize The Library, (2) avoid killing indiscriminately and preferably only murder truly bad people, and (3) save enough of his interior morality to be able to face the questions of his now 17-year-old stepdaughter honestly?

You want to know about the outrageous proposal part? Let's start with the US court decision commonly called "Citizens United" -- the one that enables private wealth to operate easily as a political force. Steinhauer, through Milo's very uncomfortable multinational (and very risky) discovery process, paints the entire global power structure as transformed into a balance of profit: Corporations, especially information ones (such as a thinly disguised Facebook-cum-Snapchat), can overwhelm and overrule, and the Big Decisions are now made to favor their increasing wealth and power. Milo's catching on:

Bad days in America and always, the cloud that hung over all human endeavor: climate change. As world temperatures crept steadily upward, people remained resolutely distracted by the crimes humans committed against each other. Everyone was dancing to the wrong tune, and dancing toward a cliff.

Later, Milo will try to explain this to Abdul, a perfect foil in such naive ignorance:

"Look we got it wrong, and we kept getting it wrong. All of us. Afer 1990, we thought history as we knew it was over. The last big competing superpower had imploded, leaving only the US to oversee the final move into a liberal democratic world order. Not everyone agreed. ... Factionalism. So we all started adjusting our policies to deal with this. But history kept shifting. Russia and China rose and Europe began to fracture, which brought us back to the start: Superpowers were back. ... Money ignores borders. Corporations are the new nation-states."

Although there seem to be quite a few lectures to Abdul (and Milo's lectures to himself), the action is swift and suspenseful, with abundant firearms, explosions, and chases. (I'm on board for the film versions, just let me know when, Mr. Clooney.)

How Milo will resolve the dangerous refocusing around him and whether he and his family can survive it without further deaths or deep wounds -- moral or physical -- is in doubt all the way through. Brace for an ending that clearly concludes the Tourist espionage books. The author never gave you any other expectation, right? But is it also the end of the world, as we know it?

And who are we more similar to: Milo? His sister Alexandra? Or ... Abdul?

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Espionage Thriller With Bioengineered Female Lead: Karen Robards Pulls It Off in THE FIFTH DOCTRINE

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

"The trouble with being a sort of Wonder Woman is, once people know you exist, they either want to force you to do their jobs, or kill you. Or both."

Wonder Woman. Nancy Pelosi. Michelle Obama. Although Americans haven’t yet elected a woman as President, there’s a clear cultural curiosity about what a strong and powerful yet honest and enjoyable woman leader might be like.

Into this vacuum has stepped Karen Robards, taking the espionage thriller into the terrain of a bioengineered super-strong female lead: the determined and yet oddly vulnerable Bianca St. Ives. Aware that she’s a genetically modified creation of a government researc lab, and well past her due date for termination and destruction, Bianca’s hiding out in The Fifth Doctrine as a private security entrepreneur in Savannah, Georgia, assisted by just a couple of people she trusts—but who don’t know her dark secret. Robards ramps the threat level to red as Bianca confronts the only international spy who’s come close to penetrating her defenses (in every sense). And to escape the pressures that Colin Rogan’s immediately applying, Bianca may lose her business, her friends … and her privacy.

Because the trouble with being a sort of Wonder Woman is, once people know you exist, they either want to force you to do their jobs, or kill you. Or both.

Bianca’s determination to protect her allies leads her to contemplate just disappearing. But (as revealed in the two previous books in this series, The Ultimatum and The Moscow Deception) Bianca already knows that “they found her in Macau, they’d found her Moscow, and now they’d found her in Savannah.” While she works to revamp her own defenses, she’ll have to tackle Rogan’s mission for her, one that requires her to transform into another woman who’s already an international operative.

Rogan directs her, “By the time we leave for the airport in the morning, you will be Lynette Holbrook and Operation Fifth Doctrine will be up and running.” What’s the name stand for? Rogan explains that the US military has five domains of war, and this one, the fifth, is information. “Kind of gives that whole ‘war of words’ thing a brand new meaning,” Rogan cracks.

Hot topics from today’s news cycle hiss and crackle in The Fifth Doctrine: Korean treachery. The spread of atomic weapons. Terrorist attacks and traitors motivated by money or bizarre loyalties.

Robards writes with fast scenes and the equivalent of a car chase every couple of chapters. Her special seasoning is a pulse-racing tide of attraction between Bianca St. Ives and Colin—balanced with logical mistrust, physical assertiveness, and a strand of growing respect between two people who would have liked to be colleagues instead of enemies. But could that ever happen in their world?

Series readers be warned, Bianca’s past includes more threats than Colin, and some of them are even closer to her heart. Brace for an exhilarating ride, and a finale that assures the series is far from over.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.