The Good Assassin by Paul Vidich

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on April 18, 2017

“Evil does not betray you” is the theme of The Good Assassin. Like all good spy novels, betrayal is at the novel’s heart. Betrayals pop up at regular intervals as the story moves forward, taking many forms.

The Good Assassin takes place five years after An Honorable Man. George Mueller, now retired from the CIA, is sent to Cuba in 1958 as an “outsider” to take a reading on Toby Graham, a CIA agent with whom Mueller is acquainted. It is feared that Graham might be unduly sympathetic to Castro’s revolution (as opposed to the Batista dictatorship that the CIA clandestinely supports), and that Graham might be funneling weapons provided by the CIA to Castro rather than Batista.

Mueller is met and instantly disliked by the FBI’s man in Havana, Frank Pryce. He’s also disliked by Graham, with whom he has a dark history that includes a woman who is also a key character.

Cuba in 1958 is not a safe place to be unless you’re Ernest Hemmingway. The story places Mueller in jeopardy from Castro’s rebels and Batista’s troops, but danger may also be lurking closer to home. Mueller has plenty of things to worry about in this relatively brief but captivating story.

Is Graham a traitor? Or is he simply a realist who follows orders but complains about the hypocrites who issue them? Graham is clearly tired of “the persistent contemplation of evil,” an occupational hazard that “weakens the soul.” If he is a traitor, what should be his fate? In the game of espionage, the novel suggests, it is impossible to separate the white hats and the black hats. There are only shades of gray. There are no innocents, no souls untainted by corruption.

Paul Vidich handles those themes adeptly, as he did in An Honorable Man. The apparent simplicity of the story masks its depth. The novel ends in ambiguity, and while that’s how most things end, readers who like stories to wrap up neatly might be affronted by the lack of clear answers. I think the ending fits the story and its themes.

I am drawn to spy fiction in part because of the moral questions that characters so often confront, at least when the themes are deeper than “patriotic Americans kill bad people.” Vidich confronts moral issue in a thoughtful way. The Good Assassin is not as surprising as An Honorable Man, but Mueller continues to be a surprising, morally complex character.

RECOMMENDED

A Single Spy by William Christie

Published by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on April 25, 2017

“We gather information by many means, but a single spy in the right place and at the right moment may change the course of history.” With that encouragement, a 17-year-old Russian boy named Alexsi is sent to Germany, where it is envisioned that he will spend years rising to a position that will allow him to uncover great secrets for the benefit of the Soviet Union.

A Single Spy begins as Alexsi, struggling to survive, joins a group of Shahsavan tribesmen, nomads who roamed between Iran and Azerbaijan until the Soviet army began to do serious border patrol. Escaping a Soviet ambush in 1936, Alexsi, at the age of sixteen, is again on his own. Alexsi speaks Russian, German, and Farsi, among other languages, and is improbably literate, which makes him attractive to the NKVD. Like it or not, Alexsi becomes a spy.

Alexsi’s first task is to infiltrate a group that opposes Stalin. To do that, he must take advantage of a girl he knew in the orphanage where he spent part of his youth. That gives William Christie an opportunity to write scenes that flash back to the corrupt and inhumane setting of a Soviet orphanage. Other flashbacks illustrate Alexsi’s pre-orphanage years and explain how Alexsi later came to be living with Shahsavan tribesmen.

In the present, Alexsi serves the Soviets while pretending to serve the Germans in Berlin and Tehran, eventually stumbling onto a plot that may indeed change the course of history. While the plot might be a bit farfetched, that’s not unusual in modern thrillers, and Christie sold me on the story’s credibility.

Alexsi isn’t a complex character and some of the other characters are little more than stereotypes, but that’s common in a thriller that depends on plot more than characterization. The plot earns points for departing from the mold for most spy stories. It also earns points for being smart. Not brilliant, but smart.

The focus on a Russian from the Middle East who infiltrates the Germans during World War II is something I haven’t seen before, and I’m always happy to find a spy novel that isn’t just a variation of stories that the masters of espionage novels have already told. The story moves quickly, particularly in the action scenes that bring the novel to its finish. The themes of betrayal on which all spy fiction depends are sharply developed. Shortcomings of characterization notwithstanding, A Single Spy is a winning contribution to the genre of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 14, 2017

A Divided Spy is the final book in the Thomas Kell trilogy. It builds on the death of Kell’s girlfriend, Rachel Wallinger, and makes occasional reference other to key events in the earlier novels, but it can easily be read as a standalone. However, the reader will likely appreciate the depth of the characters more fully with the benefit of insights provided by the first two novels.

At 46, Thomas Kell has left behind his dangerous days as a spy. Since Rachel’s murder in Istanbul, Kell has gone out of his way to avoid former colleagues at MI6. Kell would like to seek vengeance against Alexander Minasian, the man he holds responsible for Rachel’s assassination, but he has almost resigned himself to injustice. Or at least, he is resigned to it until he learns that Minasian has been spotted at a resort in Egypt.

Kell’s first step is to befriend Bernhard Riedle in Brussels. Riedle is Minasian’s jilted lover. Perhaps Kell can use Riedle to set up Minasian … but who is setting up whom? As is common in spy novels, trust is easily misplaced, leaving the reader to puzzle out the intrigue.

The other plot development involves Shahid Khan, who is returning to England (his birthplace and a land he now views as evil) to carry out a mission. Kell learns, indirectly and incompletely, that a terrorist plot against London might be afoot, and that soon becomes the focus of Kell’s investigation — to the limited extent that his boss, who doubts the authenticity of Kell’s source, will allow him to do anything at all. Of course, the spy who ignores his boss in order to do what he believes to be right is a time-honored theme of spy fiction, and Kell fits within that mold.

Modern spy novels often feature ISIS terrorists while Cold War spy novels reliably focused on Russians. It’s unusual to find a novel that includes both, but Charles Cumming manages to merge them deftly.

Much of the tension in A Divided Spy comes from uncertainty as to whether Kell is being played and, if so, by whom. The battle of wits between Kell and Minasian never quite enters Le Carré territory, but it is both convincing and engaging. The novel’s strength, in fact, is its portrayal of two spies who, while separated by ideology, are fundamentally similar people — a theme Le Carré executed to perfection and that Cumming handles with aplomb.

Cumming’s exploration of the mentality of a spy is really an exploration of anyone who deceives. Telling a constant stream of lies, whether for personal gain or to advance a government’s interests, changes a person’s nature, prevents him from being true to himself. People who care about the truth (people who are not sociopaths) may be destroyed by living a lie, and that is seen to different degrees in both of the novel’s central characters.

At the same time, living with ambiguity, never knowing whether a source (or even a colleague) can be trusted, makes it hard to maintain a moral center. Trust can get you killed; an inability to trust can do the same. The moral conflicts that characterize the best spy fiction are particularly strong in the concluding chapters of A Divided Spy. The novel is a fine end to a series that, taken as a whole, is probably Cumming’s best work.

RECOMMENDED

The Secret Trilogy by John Gardner

Published digitally by Endeavour Press on October 6, 2016

The three volumes in this trilogy — The Secret Generations, The Secret Houses, and The Secret Families — chronicle the devious machinations of the Railton family in the twentieth century world of espionage. In the first novel, Charles Railton becomes one of the first members of MI5 (then known as MO5). His Uncle Giles is what would now be called an intelligence analyst. Giles pimps out his daughter to spy on a German military officer and pimps out his son’s wife to spy on the Irish. Giles’ nephew John serves in Parliament and is appointed to the Cabinet so that he can bolster Giles’ work. John’s son James wants to be an aviator in the belief that these new-fangled flying machines might have some military reconnaissance value -- a plan that Giles fully supports.

While the first novel addresses the intrigue of World War I, the second novel moves to the Second World War. The Railtons are supporting the French resistance — Caspar Railton is running his own network — again using family members as undercover agents. The Railtons are working alongside, and intermingling with, the American Farthing family, which is perhaps even more devious than the Railtons. A traitor threatens the organization — but could the traitor possibly be a Railton? It’s up to Caspar’s nephew Naldo to figure it all out.

The third novel pits the Railtons against the Russians, this time asking whether Caspar Railton has actually been working as a Russian double agent for decades. Naldo investigates the rumor with the help of a Farthing, who has some family loyalty issues of his own. The final novel brings the series, and perhaps the Railton family’s usefulness to British intelligence, to a close.

Taken collectively, the three volumes offer an excellent history lesson and a wealth of realistic detail about the evolution of twentieth century espionage. The story is also a multigenerational family saga involving two families that intermarry (families that spy together, stay together). There are times when John Gardner’s prose is a bit too dry for my liking, and I think the espionage works better than the family drama, but the plotting is quite good and characters are strong. The Secret Trilogy showcases Gardner as a serious espionage writer, something his James Bond novels (as the most prolific successor to Ian Fleming) failed to do.

RECOMMENDED

A Killing in Moscow by Clive Egleton

This is a repost of a review posted on Tzer Island in 2010. The book was first published in 1994. It has been out of print for some time, but has been published digitally by Endeavour Press as of September 8, 2016.

Clive Egleton's second Peter Ashton novel (first published in 1994) is better than his first (Hostile Intent). Ashton is given a stronger personality (the polite British version of abrasive) and he begins to have a life outside the office. The plot is less far-fetched and more interesting than the story in Hostile Intent in that A Killing in Moscow explores the relationship between the KGB and organized crime in post-Soviet Russia, arguing (through Ashton) that it doesn't matter whether the people on the other side are motivated by politics or greed if their actions jeopardize national security.

The novel begins with the execution of British businessman Colin Joyner and the prostitute he was entertaining in his Moscow hotel room. Peter Ashton, not quite trusted or simply disliked by those in power at SIS as a result of his actions in Hostile Intent, has been assigned to run Security and Technical Services where his access to top secret information is limited. Ashton, in Moscow to conduct a security audit, is sent by the British Embassy to assist the local police in the investigation of Joyner's death. This straight-forward task becomes more complicated when Ashton learns that a Russian woman employed as an Embassy secretary has been spying on the British Embassy official who monitors commercial transactions, and has been passing information to the prostitute who was found dead in Joyner's room. The novel follows Ashton as he puzzles out the relationship between the spy and Joyner. As in Hostile Intent, Ashton makes it his responsibility to keep the spy alive, creating the opportunity for some fast moving action scenes.

The pace in A Killing in Moscow is intense and Egleton's prose is more fluid than it was in Hostile Intent. The combination of intellectual intrigue and well written action scenes makes this a fun reading experience, and the ending is just wild.

RECOMMENDED