The Vigilant Spy by Jeffrey Layton

Published by Kensington on May 11, 2020

The Vigilant Spy is the fourth in a series of novels featuring Yuri Kirov, a Russian intelligence asset who defected and joined the western world of private enterprise. He gives the CIA an assist from time to time as the price of freedom. The Vigilant Spy fills in enough details of Yuri’s past that it can be read as a standalone.

The story begins with Uyghur dissidents who believe they are retrieving an underwater surveillance device. To their misfortune, they are are actually setting off a small nuclear device near a Chinese naval base. The operation doesn’t go exactly as planned, but the Russians who conceived it have made the Chinese blame the resulting EMT damage on the United States. The Russian operation is in retribution for China’s earlier antagonism toward Russia, in which China also attempted to deflect blame to the United States for its mischief.

Yuri Kirov was a Russian intelligence operative who is using his knowledge of submarines and underwater drones to win defense contracts for the Alaskan business he founded. The CIA and DOD decide his specialized knowledge will come in handy when it learns of a new Chinese weapon, an underwater drone that moves like a snake, wraps itself around targets, and explodes.

Kirov, a CIA agent, and some SEALs try to break into a Chinese military base to steal plans for the device, a Mission Impossible adventure that, to Jeffrey Lawton’s credit, the heroes must abandon in favor of a slightly more realistic objective. Before the novel ends, Kirov will engage in a daring escape from China with a hostage in tow, while the submarine that supports his mission plays tag with Chinese and Russian vessels in the South China sea.

Lawton writes action scenes that are brimming with tension and sets them up with the kind of groundwork that allows a reader to suspend disbelief. Lawton makes the relatively outlandish plot seems barely plausible, in part because the story never pushes past the outer boundary of credibility. The machinations of China, Russia, and the United States all have an aura of realism. The political intrigue adds a layer of interest to the fast-moving story.

Kirov is presented as a guy who would like to put politics behind him and move forward with his new western family. Characterization isn’t deep but it’s sufficient for an action novel. The fact that Kirov is a Russian spy-turned-defector makes him more interesting than the typical super-patriot thriller hero. The Vigilant Spy isn’t a top shelf spy novel, but it is an entertaining action-thriller.

RECOMMENDED

A Saint from Texas by Edmund White

Published by Bloomsbury on August 4, 2020

Sometimes a book that would not otherwise interest me is so beautifully written that it carries me along. A Saint from Texas is a family drama set largely in aristocratic France, although significant parts of the story revolve around a nun in South America. While neither nuns nor aristocrats whet my literary interest, much of A Saint from Texas is absorbing. Edmund White made me care about characters in a genre that typically bores the pants off me.

Speaking of people losing their pants, White titillates with sufficient sex in its various configurations that any reader whose blood still flows hot on occasion will wonder what naughtiness the novel’s twin protagonists will be up to next. They are twins in a literal sense, two sisters who take divergent paths in life while remaining very much the same person in fundamental ways. Yvonne considers Yvette her “ransom paid to virtue.” Yvette lives a pious life on behalf of both sisters, freeing Yvonne to explore the sexual interests that Yvette makes an unsuccessful effort to subordinate. In the end, Yvonne considers them both to be “good Texas girls,” a label that is questionable in Yvonne’s case even if religious judgment is removed from the definition of “good.”

The story begins in Texas, where luck and oil (and later real estate investments) make Peter Crawford a wealthy man. He has two daughters, Yvonne and Yvette, and a new wife, Bobbie Jean, who dedicates herself to giving the girls a sophisticated and educated life. Both girls are bright, but Yvonne is drawn to fashion and celebrity while Yvette wants to live a religious, cloistered life. We eventually learn, in a scene that seems forced, that Peter is a seriously flawed father.

Neither sister wants to stay in Texas and they both have the financial security to do as they please. Yvonne travels to Paris where she marries a baron because aristocracy suits her. Of course, her husband, Adhéaume de Courcy, has only married her for her money, which he squanders as quickly as he can in ways that will maximize his desire to be envied for his good taste. Yvette, meanwhile, converts to Catholicism and joins a convent in Colombia, but only after she apparently performs a miracle by lifting a car to save a trapped child.

The novel is a study in contrasts. Texas is new and brash, a state of Barcaloungers. Paris is old and reserved, where the Louis XIV furniture that Texans would toss in the trash is revered. The convent is austere, a place where old and new have little meaning. Texas food is spicy; the food favored by French aristocrats is bland; a Filipina nun in Colombia feels lucky when she can eat white rice. Yvette has renounced materialism; Yvonne is consumed by it, at least when it comes to fashion.

Yet there are similarities in the interior lives of Yvonne and Yvette, including their attraction to women. Yvonne prefers male bodies but regards women as more considerate lovers; Yvette’s experience with a male was unwelcome, so she has less basis for comparison. Neither woman has perfect self-control, which is awkward for a married woman or a nun, but it is difficult to judge either of them, given their circumstances.

We learn about Yvette’s life (including her doubts about the church and her inability to control her sexual desire) from letters that she writes to Yvonne. White concentrates the plot on Yvonne, whose eventful life includes a ménage à trois, a strained relationship with her husband’s parents, a tense relationship with a father who disapproves of her husband, and a priest who gives her unlikely advice about how to solve her marital problems. The advice seems much too casual to be authentic and not the sort of thing that even a fallen priest would suggest. That aspect of the novel and some others (including an effort to purchase a sainthood for Yvette, the sexual choices made by the twins, and White’s portrayal of French aristocracy) are presumably intended as satire, but the satire is too underplayed to be effective. The injection of satire is also unsettlingly discordant, given that significant parts of the novel (such as the odious behavior of Peter) are apparently meant to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if Peter’s conduct toward Yvette is meant to be satirical, it isn’t funny. Some subject just don’t lend themselves to humor.

After a significant event resolves the drama that surrounds Yvonne’s life, the story peters out. The next few decades pass in a whirlwind of exposition that adds little to the story.

Notwithstanding the novel’s troubling aspects, White’s ability to create complex characters and to detail their lives in observant and elegant prose makes the novel worthwhile. All but the last couple of chapters are fascinating, in the trashy way that Dallas and Nip/Tuck were fascinating. Deeply religious readers might want to avoid the novel entirely. Readers who insist that only admirable characters can make a book enjoyable will find few characters they would want to know. Moral faults aside, both Yvette and Yvonne live the life they choose, and Yvonne at least lives an interesting (albeit scandalous) life that compelled me to keep reading.

RECOMMENDED

The Last Agent by Robert Dugoni

Published by Thomas & Mercer on September 22, 2020

The Last Agent follows The Eighth Sister as the second book to chronicle the exploits of Charles Jenkins, an unretired spy. Jenkins came out of retirement in the last novel because he needed the money. In this one, Jenkins returns to Russia to repay a favor.

Jenkins escaped from Russia in The Eighth Sister thanks to the sacrifice of Paulina Ponomayova. She provided a distraction that gave Jenkins time to get away from his pursuers. Jenkins assumed she died. It turns out that she is alive (at least for the moment) and in prison, where she will certainly be tortured on the premise that she knows the identities of spies who have passed information to the CIA for decades.

Naturally, the CIA decides that it would be smart to send Jenkins, a tall black guy who stands out in Russia, to rescue Paulina. Jenkins coerces a retired Russian spy, Viktor Federov, into providing an assist, playing both on Federov’s greed and on his competitive nature. After they confirm that Paulina is still alive, Jenkins concocts a plan to bust her out of prison and smuggle her out of Russia.

Farfetched? Of course it is, but improbability doesn’t get in the way of entertainment in a novel that is largely a setup followed by an extended chase scene. Much of the fun derives from the novel’s tradecraft, the various deceptions and ruses that the CIA employs to keep Jenkins and Paulina from being captured or killed. As for the chase, on roads and trains and boats and foot, Robert Dugoni delivers the excitement that a thriller should generate. The outcome is predictable and the story is bit light on drama, but the last half moves too quickly to allow time for contemplation of the novel’s faults.

The very last scene sets up a return to Russia to save the surviving spies whose identities Jenkins tried to protect in the first novel. Jenkins might want to stay unretired because he hasn’t felt this young in years, chases apparently serving as a tonic for youth until you get caught. I fear that Dugoni will go to the well once to often if he sends Jenkins back to Russia — by now, every cop in Russia must know that a tall black guy should be detained with no questions asked — but it isn’t fair to judge a novel I haven’t read. Maybe the formula will work a third time. I can attest that it worked well enough the second time to earn a recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

Spook Street by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Press on February 21, 2017

Mick Herron’s Slough House books are among the most entertaining spy novels of the current century. Slough House is home to members of the British Secret Service who are considered unworthy of employment but who, for whatever reason, cannot be fired. Under the deceptively watchful eye of Jackson Lamb, the “slow horses” at Slough House manage to prevail, more or less, in their fight against England’s enemies, or its friends, depending on the circumstances. Spook Street is the fourth novel in the series.

Spook Street opens with stage setting, reintroducing familiar characters and their problems, which variously include a gambling addiction, alcoholism, anger management issues, and troubled relationships. A new character, J.K. Coe, is clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum and probably high on the psychopathy scale. A terrorist bombing occurs in the background but doesn’t seem immediately connected to the plot.

The plot’s immediate concern is River Cartwright, whose grandfather, a legendary spy who raised River, is becoming lost to dementia. River’s grandfather is increasingly paranoid and apparently living in the past, certain he’s being followed by an enemy. Lost in his fantasy, when River comes to his home and draws him a bath, the old man seems determined to kill his grandson.

That plot eventually sends a capable killer to Slough House while Lamb is off buying whiskey, leaving nobody tending the shop who has the skills to fight an armed assassin. Before that happens, a slow horse does some actual spying, traveling undercover to France and learning about a black ops training site that was apparently responsible for the attempt on the life of River’s grandfather and for the assassin who invades Slough House. The purpose for the site remains a mystery until the novel’s end, one of a few mysteries that occupy the reader as the story gathers steam.

Like the other novels in the series, Spook Street integrates humor, action, and unexpected moments of drama. The first third is a mix of wit, farce, and slapstick before a more serious story begins to unfold.

It seems unwise to pick a favorite character in this series because the character might not survive until the end of the story. But live or die, the characters all have the kind of quirky personalities and idiosyncrasies that invite empathy. They are not necessarily a likeable bunch — they tend to have love-hate relationships with each other — but they are fundamentally decent and, on occasion, surprisingly competent. Particularly Lamb, whose competence is never in question, but whose Machiavellian nature asserts itself in the interest of a good cause at the novel’s end. Above all, having been a joe for much of his life, Lamb takes care of his joes. “And one thing joes learn quickly is that those who write the rules rarely suffer their weight.”

Mick Herron stitches this all together with fine prose, deadpan humor, and sympathetic insight into the emotions of third string players. Spook Street maintains the high level of a series that offers a unique and welcome take on the British spy novel.

RECOMMENDED

House Privilege by Mike Lawson

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on July 7, 2020

Mike Lawson’s Joe DeMarco novels amuse the hell out of me. DeMarco is a fixer for the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, who as a result of the last election is about to resume his role as speaker. DeMarco doesn’t care about politics or much of anything other than golf. He’s a nonpracticing lawyer who hopes he can hang onto his fixer gig long enough to retire with a government pension, allowing him to spend all his time golfing rather than most of it. Violent circumstances keep interfering with the easy life he wants to lead. Those circumstances combine with DeMarco’s long-suffering attitude to fuel entertaining novels that are surprisingly light, given the number of mobsters, sleezy politicians, crooked lawyers, and sociopaths who populate the pages.

Congressman John Mahoney has a teenage goddaughter named Cassie. Mahoney’s wife adores Cassie but Mahoney pretty much ignores her, as he does anyone who can’t help him gain more power. Cassie’s parents die in a plane crash that almost kills Cassie, leaving Cassie with a trust fund that has been managed by a lawyer who inherited the job from her father, another lawyer who was a friend of Cassie’s father.

Until Mahoney’s wife can get back from a friend’s funeral, Mahoney wants DeMarco to figure out what Cassie might need. DeMarco doesn’t develop much of a rapport with the teenage girl or the nanny who is taking care of her or the lawyer who is managing her trust. None of them are as interesting to DeMarco as the Boston bartender he starts dating while he’s checking up on Cassie. DeMarco becomes suspicious, however, when an accountant who was auditing the trust is killed in a convenience store robbery. The series of suspicious deaths leads DeMarco to one of Boston’s most powerful mobsters.

House Privilege tells a good story at a steady pace. Eventually DeMarco chases a criminal around Montenegro, a country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S., in a series of chapters that accelerate the story’s action. Many of the laughs in House Privilege are unexpected, as when a character lies down in a jail cell and wonders why there is blood on the ceiling.

The DeMarco novels remind me of John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers novels. The books are good beach reads, mixing a fun plot with a likable protagonist who is always a bit disappointed in the world he navigates. Not all of the DeMarco novels have been as good as the last two, but at the age of 76, Lawson seems to be hitting his stride.

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