Ascension by Oliver Harris

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books on July 13, 2021

Ascension is the second Elliot Kane spy novel and the better of the two. It combines crime and suspense with themes of espionage. The result is an unusual but fascinating story that unfolds on a desolate island in the South Atlantic.

Oliver Harris informs the narrative with the history of Ascension Island, a place that few have visited and that even fewer want to see again. Ascension is governed by the British and is valued as a strategic jumping off point when the Brits find the need to invade the Falklands. The BBC maintains a relay station on Ascension. The European Space Agency maintains a rocket tracking station there, as did NASA for a period of time. The US has an air base on Ascension and the US Space Force uses it for whatever Space Force does. Thanks to Darwin, the arid volcanic island now has some trees, but Harris makes clear that it isn’t a place where anyone would want to spend a vacation. The novel gets its noir atmosphere from the island’s bleak nature and despondent residents.

The island has been used as a relay station for underwater cables for more than a century. Harris, who obviously engaged in meticulous research to support his novel, uses the cables as a jumping off point. A new transatlantic cable is being installed in Ascension. British intelligence wants to tap into it because there’s no such thing as privacy. Of course, the Brits don’t want the Americans to know what they’re doing.

Kathryn Taylor, who runs the South Atlantic desk for MI6, gives communications specialist Rory Bannatyne a cover story and sends him to Ascension to execute the cable-tapping plan. Taylor worked with Bannatyne when he was tapping a cable on Oman. Taylor bribed Bannatyne’s way out of trouble in Oman after he became uncomfortably close with some minors. Taylor never reported the incident to MI6, which is why Bannatyne is still available for the job. Unfortunately for Taylor, Bannatyne apparently commits suicide shortly after a young girl on Ascension goes missing.

Taylor sends Kane to Ascension to find out what happened to Bannatyne, whether he had anything to do with the missing girl, and whether it is safe to continue the cable intercept operation. Kane is undercover as an historian. Since there is only one flight to Ascension per month, Kane knows he will be there a while. When he arrives, however, he discovers that the hotel where he booked a room has closed, forcing him to take up residence in the home that was just vacated by the parents of the missing girl.

Kane’s investigation brings him into contact with a teenage boy who is suspected of murdering the missing girl. The boy’s mother is a General in a branch of the American military. After Kane befriends the General’s husband, a second girl goes missing. Kane is suspected of kidnapping the girl because he has befriended an unpopular family and, since he’s new on the island, he’s a convenient suspect. What seems to be an interesting crime story later changes gears as Kane discovers that the island is keeping secrets that may imperil the national security of Great Britain and its allies. Kane’s life and Taylor’s career are both threatened as suspense builds in England and on Ascension.

Harris’s intelligent plot is meticulously constructed. Its eventual destination will keep most readers guessing.

Taylor is the kind of character who is a fixture in espionage fiction, a spy who defies orders because she knows something is rotten and doesn’t trust her superiors to resolve the problem. Kane seems to be a more emotionally complex character in Ascension than he was in A Shadow Intelligence. Maybe he’s just growing on me. In any case, while most spy novels follow a well-traveled path, Harris has, for the second time, found a new story to tell. His second effort proves that he’s earning a position as a top shelf spy novelist.

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An Ambush of Widows by Jeff Abbott

Published by Grand Central Publishing on July 6, 2021

The plot of An Ambush of Widows is about 70% believable. That’s probably average for modern crime novels. In one scene, the driver of a moving car tries to shoot a character who is standing inside a restaurant. The shooter just isn’t the kind of person who would be stupid enough to think that (a) the shooting will be successful or (b) the driver of a vehicle in urban traffic is likely to avoid the police after attempting an assassination. More than a few relationships between characters, some of which are kept secret, are difficult to believe. Some of those are too coincidental to be credible. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story and that’s what counts.

The premise seems simple. A woman in New Orleans gets a call from her husband’s cellphone. The caller advises the woman that her husband has been killed in Austin. Who called her and why? Who killed her husband and why? The woman, Kirsten North, suspects the call is a prank because her husband Henry is in New York. When she can’t reach Henry, she looks at the news in Austin and discovers that there were, in fact, two recent murders in the same Austin warehouse. One of the victims is unidentified. Kirsten immediately flies to Austin to investigate. Most rational wives would call the police before booking the flight on the theory that the police should know about the call immediately. Kirsten’s failure to do so creates the yet another credibility issue.

Henry is, if fact, one of the murder victims. Henry owns a small computer security business. The other victim is Adam Zhang, a wealthy partner in an investment group that develops high tech businesses. Kirsten knows of no connection between the two men. Neither does Flora Zhang, Adam’s wife. Kirsten decides to ferret out that connection with the help of her former foster brother, Zach Couvillon.

The seemingly simple plot will eventually invite the reader to make charts and diagrams as it becomes more complex. Keeping track of the various ways in which characters are connected to each other, often unknowingly, is something of a chore, but that’s not unusual in novels of this nature.

Kirsten’s backstory as a foster child occupies a good chunk of the novel and adds to its complexity. Suffice it to say that her foster dad was not the nice guy Kirsten believed him to be. Kirsten’s teen years include a dramatic episode involving Zach, her foster parents, and Henry (who was her neighbor at that point). The drama eventually shapes the events that follow, although Kirsten doesn’t understand all of the ways in which that will be true.

All of those characters and others — from Adam’s live-in cousin to the incredibly polite homeless man who finds the bodies — play a role and could be murder suspects. Planted evidence adds to the threat that an innocent person will be blamed. The police suspect Kirsten or Flora because the spouse is always guilty, but the reader knows that Kirsten was in New Orleans and couldn’t have killed Henry. Everyone else is fair game. The reveal again tested my willingness to suspend disbelief, but Jeff Abbott doesn’t cross the line between implausibility and impossibility.

As Kirsten plays sleuth, she sneaks around and unearths clues with unlikely success. Those scenes create a bit of tension, but the action only creates a true sense of danger near the novel’s end. Also near the end, a character steals a computer from a house filled with security guards with no explanation of how he accomplished that feat. I felt a bit cheated by that.

While Kirsten benefits from the greatest degree of character development, a contract killer who becomes a key character spends much of his time worrying about getting home in time to be with his wife as she gives birth. I enjoyed the incongruity of an apparent sociopath’s concern about being a good husband. Zach, on the other hand, could have used a bit more character development, given his importance to the story.

The plot is unnecessarily convoluted and depends too much on coincidental or secret relationships. Still, the story held my interest until the action ended. The last several pages are devoted to an expository explanation of how all the loose ends tie together. Some of that seemed a bit contrived. Fortunately, the fun of trying to puzzle out the story’s various mysteries outweighs the novel’s flaws. And the very last chapter, a short one, contains an out of the blue surprise that overcame any reservations I had about the story’s weaknesses.

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The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 6, 2021

In a certain kind of spy novel, nothing is as it seems. There are secrets within secrets. False identities conceal other false identities. Telling the good guys from the bad, the truth from lies, becomes as difficult for the reader as it is for the protagonist. Spy novels of that nature are good fun when they are handled skillfully. The Cover Wife is Dan Fesperman’s tutorial in deception.

Professor Winston Armitage, a scholar of Aramaic and Arabic languages, has written a book that contends the Quran has been mistranslated. The virgins that have been promised to martyrs are actually raisins or white grapes. Since terrorists would be unlikely to sacrifice their lives for raisins in the afterlife, even particularly delicious raisins, the book is intended to cause a stir in the terrorist community. At least, the CIA hopes that will be the result. Armitage is going on a book tour at the CIA’s expense, a scheme of information warfare cooked up by Paul Bridger, who manages operations across Europe.

Claire Saylor has a complicated history with Bridger. He assigns Claire to the team that will guard Armitage. She will play the role of Armitage’s wife. In an unofficial role, Bridger wants Claire to conduct surveillance in Hamburg. She conducts unofficial surveillance of her own and photographs someone in Hamburg who might be running the operation, using Bridger as a front.

Two other characters in Hamburg are important to the story. One is a young man named Mahmoud who seems to be a willing and eager recruit to Osama bin Laden’s cause. The other is Ken Donlan, an FBI agent in Hamburg who has worked with Claire in the past. Claire and Ken encounter each other while they are both keeping a clandestine eye on Mahmoud.

They observe that Mahmoud seems to be getting along well with a group of young Muslims who are associated with terrorism. One member of the group is getting married. Another of Mahmoud's friends is already married but is being sent away on a mission. The young man’s headstrong wife entreats Mahmoud to talk her husband out of doing whatever he has been assigned to do. Mahmoud is enchanted and unnerved by the woman’s beauty. Even seeing her uncovered face seems like a sin for which he will need to atone. Mahmoud feels torn by divided loyalty to his friend and to a woman who will be at risk if she interferes with his friend’s assignment.

The plot could move in many directions. Part of the intrigue is generated by uncertainty. What is the story about? What is Bridger’s endgame? Who is the mysterious man in Claire’s photograph? What plan is taking Mahmoud and his friends away from Hamburg? The questions eventually converge, yielding a surprising answer that causes the reader to rethink assumptions about how the plot has unfolded. Fesperman misleads the reader, but only because his characters are misled. In fact, the reader will come to understand the story’s key truth before it becomes apparent to the characters.

Claire and Ken are reasonably complex and likable characters. They play the civil servant role that is common in espionage thrillers — spies who want to do the right thing but haven’t been told the secrets that will help them understand what is right and what is wrong. They work for bureaucrats who are also common in spy thrillers, employees who have risen in the ranks because of their ability to stab others in the back to protect their positions.

Fesperman conceived an excellent idea and avoided being overly ambitious in its execution. He puts all of those elements into play to tell a relatively simple story that seems complex to the characters, simply because they aren’t allowed to see the big picture. For pulling off a credible surprise — the kind of surprise that, when the truth dawns on the reader, will provoke an “Oh wow” — at the end of an entertaining story, Fesperman earns an easy recommendation.

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Tender Is the Bite by Spencer Quinn

Published by Forge Books on July 6, 2021

Chet the Jet is back in the eleventh installment of Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series. Bernie Little is the only human employee of the Little Detective Agency. Bernie is much loved by Chet, his large and loyal canine partner. Chet helps solve crimes, often inadvertently, while puzzling about the mysteries of human behavior.

To Chet’s dismay, Bernie decides to investigate a mystery without a paying client. The story begins with a young woman named Mavis following Bernie, working up the courage to speak with him. When Bernie asks whether she needs his help, she flees, apparently frightened off by a political bumper sticker that she sees on the floor of Bernie’s car. Bernie, who has no interest in politics or politicians, has no idea where the bumper sticker came from until he learns that one of his neighbors dropped it into his car. The top is always down on Bernie’s Porsche, making it all the easier for Chet to jump in and out.

Bernie gets a plate number as Mavis drives away. His police contacts advise him that the car is registered to Johnnie Lee Goetz. He also learns that Johnnie Lee has a restraining order against Mickey Rottoni. Sensing a mystery that needs his attention, Bernie goes in search of Johnnie Lee, hoping to find Mavis.

The restraining order was served by Weatherly Wauneka, who has a dog that  looks very much like Chet. Weatherly might become Bernie’s new love interest. Series fans will know that Bernie’s former girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, married someone else, although she pops up for a cameo in Tender Is the Bite.

The plot involves a ferret, a Russian thug named Olek, a potential client who wants to hire Bernie for a job in Kauai, a senator and his horse-loving wife, the eventual disappearance of Mavis and Johnnie Lee, a dead body or two, and a blackmail scheme. All of that (minus the ferret) might be standard fare for a crime novel, but the story differs from traditional crime novels because it is narrated by Chet, who has no use for ferrets or perps.

After eleven novels, many of Chet’s opinions will be familiar to readers, including his animosity toward horses, bears, and birds. We know that Chet wants to go through every door first, that he wants to sit in the Porsche’s shotgun seat (forcing human passengers to sit on the back bench), and that he’s certain Bernie is the smartest human in the room. At times during Tender Is the Bite, I thought Quinn should make a greater effort to develop new material, as many of Chet’s observations seem to be recycled from earlier books. Still, the Chet and Bernie novels are always a joy, at least for dog lovers, if only because Quinn has nailed the way we imagine dogs would think if they had the vocabulary to express their thoughts.

The plot is as credible as it needs to be in a novel that is narrated by a dog. Action scenes give Bernie and Chet the chance to save each other from harm. Chet even tries to climb a rope ladder, a difficult task since he hasn’t yet mastered regular ladders. I’ve probably read about half of the Chet and Bernie novels and have never found one I wouldn’t recommend to dog lovers, although some are better than others. I would rank Tender Is the Night in the middle of the pack.

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Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Bloomsbury Publishing on June 29, 2021

Gabriel Krauze tells the story of Gabriel Krauze using the language of the street. Specifically, the language of South Kilburn, a large London housing development that is largely demolished by the time the novel ends. I don’t know how much of Who They Was is autobiography and how much is fiction, but from the standpoint of reading pleasure, the distinction doesn’t matter. Krauze’s voice rings true and his story is unvarnished. Even if some details have been fabricated or changed, the story’s raw power, together with Krauze’s street eloquence, makes Who They Was a compelling read.

The first-person story follows Krauze from the age of 17 through his early adulthood. It is the story of a complicated man, a thug with artistic talent, brains and ambition, who excels both in school and in street crime (incidents to which he refers as “madnesses”). Students and professors who share an academic life with Krauze appear to admire his intelligence and analytical ability. He has an unhealthy passion for Nietzsche, but he reads widely, understands what he reads, and brings insight to his studies. Yet those who admire Krauze at “uni” would likely be appalled by his off-campus life.

On the other hand, Krauze has a plentiful supply of admirers in the neighborhoods where he hangs. He is respected for his audacity and fearlessness. He robs the helpless, stabs his adversaries, and beats people with little provocation. He accepts short stints of incarceration as the price of living his own life. He has no interest in being supervised by the authorities and blows off his community service, leading to more time behind bars. He loves his parents, Polish immigrants who don’t understand Krauze’s failure to conform, but he has no interest in following their rules. He stays in their home on occasion but he’s usually in South Kilburn. He sees his nagging mother as “covered in spikes. Maybe that’s how she survives the world. Maybe that’s how she survives me.”

Krauze narrates a series of incidents, some violent, some sexual, some involving bonding with friends, some involving his studies. Krauze robs innocent people, sells drugs, smokes an impressive amount of weed, and maintains his street cred by punishing anyone who gives him a screwface (dirty look). To many readers, this will seem like the astonishing waste of a life, but Krauze earns his degree so his time is not entirely wasted. As Krauze explains, his lifestyle is “totally accepted” by his peers, “if anything it sets a standard for the young g’s to live up to and you can see it in how the violence becomes the inspiration for everyone’s lyrics when they spit rap and grime bars about bussin guns and murking man.” Who They Was does not come with a glossary, but a few trips to the Urban Dictionary will bring the reader up to speed.

In Krauze’s world, “only money and status matters” and “any act of violence, exploitation, whatever, can’t be unfair because that’s how life works.” At the same time, he feels compelled to attend the university “for the sake of my brain. I knew I’d go mad if I couldn’t read books.” The two halves of Krauze seem inconsistent, not because educated people don’t commit crime — an education doesn’t prevent the educated from preying upon the vulnerable — but because they don’t usually commit violent street crimes.

Despite the insights that education has given him, Krauze shows little interest in living a different life. His girlfriend wants him to get a nine-to-five but he’s “not gonna become a version of me that doesn’t exist.” He explains, “I don’t want to run from the law and feel my heartbeat making me sick. … I want to see fear in people’s eyes and eat my own fear. I want to live dangerously, on the edge of existence.” He justifies his lifestyle by reference to Nietzche’s belief that “morality is just a rule of behaviour relative to the level of danger in which individals live. If you’re living in dangerous times, you can’t afford to live according to moral structures the way that someone who lives in safety and peace can.” Of course, Krauze could make an effort to live in safety and peace, and with a degree he probably could, but he’s convinced that his former life would come back to haunt him, that if he tries to live differently he’ll be dead in a year. That seems unlikely, particularly if he moves away from London, but it’s also pretty clear that he’s an adrenalin junky who doesn’t want a conventional life. “Better to take risks, better to plunge into the fire and feel alive, if only for a moment, than not have really lived at all.” He understands the risk of “living with demons until you become one yourself” but doesn’t seem to fear the possibility that he might cross that line. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Krauze might be a sociopath, but he is not without emotion. He makes a point of shutting down his emotions, but he seems to feel genuine love for his parents and friends. He appreciates beauty. He learned to play the piano and enjoys Chopin. His cellmates praise his drawings. He looks at the moon and marvels that everyone on the planet throughout human history has seen the same moon and that all humans are connected by it. He sees life as performative, as not quite real, which might simply be a sign of immaturity.

Who They Was is a fascinating narrative of a complex life. They rhythms of Krause’s language, the creative juxtaposition of slang and academic argot, set the book apart from less inspired stories of hard lives. There is nothing sentimental, nothing artificial, nothing contrived about the way Krause tells his story. A reader can like him or hate him and he just doesn’t care. From a literary standpoint, how the reader feels about Krause is unimportant. His passion, the intensity of his story, and his brutal honesty provide a convincing window into a life that most readers can barely imagine.

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