The protagonist, he goes by several aliases, but Michel Khoury appears to be his given name, is a former Palestinian refugee from Lebanon. His parents were murdered during the Israeli-sponsored massacres in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. Stateless and without family he is fathered by a friendly Palestinian who in time teaches Michel the tradecraft of undercover work, but with a twist. The goal of these Palestinians is to undercut the piecemeal Oslo peace negotiations of the 1990s with a truly comprehensive peace deal between Palestinians and Israelis. Michel couriers secret messages around the world until he makes the one mistake no spy should ever make. He falls in love with a British girl. Khoury’s slow awakening to the entanglement of high stakes espionage he has entered, and how he has unwittingly dragged in his first real love, provides terrific suspense without ever dropping into polemic. Remarkably, this book eschews diatribe about middle eastern politics while embedding in one of the great political feuds of our time.
-
-
The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCrarry *** (of 4)
OK, it’s a period piece Spy Novel. Think Ian Fleming. Sean Connery. In this caper, Paul Christopher works for the CIA and he speeds around the world piecing together the hidden culprits behind JFK’s assassination. Christopher’s hypothesis is Oswald was hired in retaliation for American attacks on prominent Vietnamese families. I’m not much into Kennedy conspiracies — there seem to be an bottomless well of them — but the book rings true mostly because its author was a spook himself in the CIA. The craft of 1960s Cold War spying appears realistic even if from our current vantage point it feels like it is being rendered in black and white with a cheesy saxaphone soundtrack. Vietnam, the Congo, Rome, and Paris are all atmospherically accurate — you can just about taste the Parisian drizzle and can hear the street calls in Saigon — and the characters are about as authentic as any on Mad Men. I’m not sure anyone who was born after 1980 would get this book, but if you can recall the 1960s, Tears of Autumn is a nice trot down memory lane. Tears of Autumn is the second novel in the Paul Christopher series. -
An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris *** (of 4)
Robert Harris makes his living fictionalizing famous historical events (see Pompeii). In this case, it is the end of the nineteenth century, and the French have unjustly stripped Albert Dreyfus of his rank in the French Army and disposed of him to die locked in a tin shed beneath the blazing tropical sun of Devil’s Island. It is a moment of overt anti-Semitism in France that results in a horrible miscarriage of justice that stains France ever after, and, I have to admit, an event about which I knew precious few details. Well, this book has the details, but the first half is just that, a drudge of notecards Harris must have used to construct his text. Harris presents the Dreyfus Affair through the eyes of Col. Georges Picquart, an officer who at first, following orders, assists in Dreyfus’s conviction. In the subsequent five years, however, Picquart is given the credit, in this account, for becoming a man of conscience who recognizes that Dreyfus has been framed and the Army is involved in a massive cover-up. The book does not come alive until its second half when at last it becomes a courtroom procedural. By the end, when Dreyfus is finally recalled to France, and Picquart has become France’s leading General, you are still left wondering about the larger picture. Why was France so anti-Semitic? On what evidence did Zola, Clemenceau, and their fellow Dreyfusards base their case against the government? And why do all of the main characters in Harris’ account speak with such identical, lifeless voices? -
Black and White and Dead All Over by John Darnton *** (of 5)
A despised editor of a very thinly disguised New York Times is found spread-eagled and more than dead in the basement of the paper’s headquarters. An editor’s spike is hammered into his chest with a taunting note appended. An investigative journalist from the paper’s staff is handed the story and an upstart female officer of the NYPD is assigned the case. More murders, lots of clues, red herrings, and way too many characters to keep track of populate the mystery. The author, a Times reporter, feels compelled to include every editor, publisher, writer, columnist, and assistant who works at a paper so you learn a lot about how the news is assembled. Moreover, the timing of the story in the late 2000s when print media was under deep threat from the Internet, bloggers, bundlers, and tweeters is an interesting reminder of how much has changed in the delivery of the news. It is a case of wrenching the Old Gray Lady into the new century. There are some very funny bits about stories that find their way into the news to sell papers — styles of the young and hipsterish, gossip, cooking videos — and neither gore, nor action prevail. Best if read as a period piece about the nature and value of traditional news reporting. -
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny **** (of 5)
The ninth book in the Detective Armand Gamache series is a completely lovable installment. Gamache must locate a missing person with a false identity at the same time he has to survive the destruction of his stable of best assistants. Little by little Gamache’s superiors have transferred all the best detectives out of his unit and placed them in lackey jobs in the Montreal police department. More terrifying, still, is that Gamache’s right hand man and close confidante, Beauvoir has not only been taken away, but Beauvoir is addicted to painkillers and his mental health is deteriorating rapidly. A phone call arrives from one of Gamache’s friends in the tiny, off-the-grid community of Three Pines. An old woman who had planned to come for the Christmas holiday has failed to arrive. The combined mysteries of the missing person and the motive for who might be attempting to disable Gamache’s capacities to investigate are carefully and exquisitely plotted. Warm tea, comic relief, and old friends bustle about Three Pines and welcome you to get cozy while you, the reader, work with the Chief Inspector to solve his latest cases. -
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem **** (of 4)
Lionel Esrog, along with three friends, is plucked from a Brooklyn orphanage by Frank Minna, a self-made detective and small time Brooklyn nogoodnik. Early in the book, Minna walks into a trap leaving his four offspring to solve the mystery of what happened to their boss. Lionel lets you know in the opening lines that he has Tourette’s Syndrome. He obsesses on numbers and patterns, word tensions explode in his mind and burst from his lips: EAT ME, BAILY! As he works to solve the mystery, Lionel becomes a full human being, far deeper, funnier, and more intelligent than we, or anyone around him, gives him credit for. His fellow Brooklynites refer to him as FreakShow, and we do, too, until slowly we recognize how automatically we have categorized Lionel because of his ticks and squirms. The supporting cast, including the entire borough, are superbly rendered. Every voice retaining its original Italian, Jewish, or out-of-city origins with precise adjustments for the age of the speaker. The mystery is fun and funny enough, but Motherless Brooklyn is a must-read because its characters and sense of place lodge in your head like one of Lionel’s numerical obsessions, a friendly itcth that cannot be ignored. -
The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye *** (of 4)
The year is 1845. The city of New York has grown a little too quickly from 50,000 to half a million. The potato blight has recently struck Ireland and now starving Irish immigrants are arriving by the boatload creating friction with resident Protestants whose fear of a Papist takeover is breeding abhorrent levels of prejudice. New York is a city of pestilence, prostitution, fires, pigs, mud, crime, and hunger and in 1845 its first police force is created to establish some order. Timothy Wilde is the city’s first crime detective and he spends his days tracking across lower Manhattan searching for a serial killer of young children. All the evidence suggests that Protestants are ritually murdering Catholic children in hopes of frightening the Irish back across the Atlantic. The strength of this mystery is what we learn about mid-Nineteenth Century New York City. The imagery is fantastic. Unfortunately, Timothy Wilde is just an ordinary detective, not quite endearing enough to make me want to get involved in his second case. -
The Missing File by D.A. Mishani *** (of 4)
Why are so many contemporary detectives so depressed? Here’s another: Detective Avraham Avraham, a lonely, single, self-doubting Israeli detective slogging into a job that utterly consumes him. His first case, or at least the first in the series, revolves around a missing teenager, Ofer. Ofer is sixteen, introverted, sharing his bedroom with his younger brother, and spending way too much time on his computer. Ofer has a creepy neighbor downstairs, tense inattentive parents, and apparently no real friends. After Ofer heads to school on Wednesday morning and doesn’t return, Avraham Avraham has to find him. Someone once said you read mysteries only in part to figure out whodunnit. The other part is to learn about foreign places and times. The Missing File, translated from Hebrew, does reflect contemporary Israel, but only subtly. This mystery could have taken place anywhere. It’s an easy read, so credit goes also to the translator as well as the author, but also a little scary, probably because of the emphasis on foreshadowing that heightens the feeling of anxiety. -
Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino *** (of 4)
A Japanese husband announces that he will follow through on his promise to divorce his wife because she has not borne him a child within their first year of marriage. He already has a mistress lined up when he dies of mysterious causes. Naturally, the spurned wife is the lead suspect but she is hundreds of miles away when her husband succumbs. The Japanese investigative team consists of a seasoned lead, Tokyo Policeman Kusunagi, who is insensitive about his perceptive, young, female recruit. Together they are aided by Professor Yukawa, a heady and utterly cranky academic. The reader on this audio book brought the well developed characters to life and though the ending was mildly anticlimactic the story itself was fully engaging. -
Code Name Verity *** (of 4) by Elizabeth Wein
This is the tale of a irrepressible friendship between two women doing very unusual jobs. It is World War II and England is barely holding its own as the Germans begin bombing runs over Britain. Maddie, one of the two women, is a mechanical wizard who earns herself a place in the skies as a highly skilled pilot. Queenie, the other, is a spy. Consider how many female spies and pilots you can picture from that era and you have the underpinnings for a lot of suspense with a new twist. I can’t give away more of the plot without being a spoiler. Ignore the book’s cover and be aware the book is written for Young Adults, but enjoy it.
