The Spy Who Never Was by Tom Savage

Published by Random House/Alibi on January 9, 2018

Spy thrillers should be based on intrigue and suspense. They should never be dull. The Spy Who Never Was fails those tests. The novel might appeal to a fan of cozy mysteries, but I’ve never heard of a cozy spy novel. If you’re more interested in the heroine’s latest “sassy” hairstyle and footwear selection than international intrigue, this might be the right novel for you. Fans of traditional spy novels should avoid it.

The CIA has been spreading rumors that an agent named Chris Waverly has been conducting operations, thereby protecting the agents who actually conducted the operations. It’s doubtful that foreign agencies would fall for the ruse, but that’s the premise. It’s more believable than the rest of the story, which hinges on the delightful coincidence that the real Nora Baron looks just like the fictitious Chris Waverly.

Spy hobbyist Nora is told that blackmailers have tumbled to the fact that Waverly is fictitious and are threatening to reveal the truth, thus exposing real agents to harm, unless the CIA pays them. At the CIA’s direction, Nora takes a break from her busy life as the wife of a real spy, mother to a college student, and acting teacher to pretend to be Chris Waverly, thus flushing the blackmailers into the open.

It is clear to the reader that the CIA’s story isn’t making much sense, and that eventually becomes clear to Nora as well, although she’s a bit slow on the uptake. By the time she has finished her assigned mission, however, with more than half a novel to go and a trail of killed or missing agents, Nora realizes that she’s being played. She becomes convinced of that when the dreaded assassin The Falcon (because assassins always have cool names like The Falcon) visits her hotel room in the middle of the night. The story goes downhill from there.

Nora is the kind of spy who does her spying in tourist spots like Venice and London, making it easy for the author to provide local color. This time she goes to Paris, where the local color consists of popular restaurants and a river cruise along the Seine. Tom Savage offers an explanation for Nora’s tourism, but it seems contrived. The more likely explanation is that Savage has taken some European vacations to popular tourist destinations (including a river cruise along the Seine) and decided to turn them into material for spy novels. A description of Lucerne (another tourist destination) sounds like it came from a travel guide, although the bed-and-breakfast in which Nora stays (I’m not kidding) is described in loving detail.

Nora is also the kind of spy who beats up men twice her size who attack her, despite having no military training and minimal CIA training. But she has taken classes in jazz dance, which appears to be all the training anyone needs to defeat a stronger and more skillful fighter.

We’re told that the CIA is actively involved in breaking up Russian and African sex trafficking rings, which is not at all the CIA’s job and about which it could probably care less. Then we’re told that a spy has an important cellphone conversation at a bar with the bartender standing there, a remarkably sloppy performance by the spy but convenient for Nora when she chats up the bartender.

The characters in The Spy Who Never Was are all too cheery and freshly scrubbed (even the bad guys) to be convincing. They certainly aren’t interesting. The life story of the spy originally posing as Chris Waverly — avenging the assassinations of her assassin parents, falling in love with the Russian assassin who was tasked with killing her — borders on the preposterous. Her motivation for disappearing is equally implausible.

The big reveal (the true reason Nora was sent on her mission) is unoriginal and unbelievable. So we have dull characters and a farfetched plot, with occasional moments of underplayed violence that only add to the story’s overall dullness. It’s all very cozy, but if you’re looking for an actual spy novel, you’ll probably be disappointed.

NOT RECOMMENDED