The November Man by Bill Granger

First published in 1986; published digitally by Grand Central Publishing on July 29, 2014

A good spy novel should have intrigue and suspense and characters who wrestle with internal conflicts. It should recognize the moral ambiguity inherent in espionage. Most importantly, it should hold a reader's rapt attention from the first scene to the last. The November Man does all that. First published in 1986 and the first in a series, a digital edition of The November Man is being re-released to coincide with the release of a movie of the same name.

Alexa, a KGB assassin, has been ordered to kill the agent known as November despite his offer to defect to the Soviet Union. November, whose real name is Devereaux, thinks he is safe because he left the trade, erased himself from the world, and is living a nondescript life in Switzerland with the woman he loves and a boy he rescued. Whether Devereaux will be forced to return to the trade, and what that will mean to his relationship with Rita, is a question that alternately torments and intrigues him.

Hanley, director of operations for the Section that employed November, has apparently suffered a breakdown. Contrary to regulations, Hanley has been calling November over unsecured lines, babbling about "Nutcracker" and saying "there are no spies" over and over. Hanley's meaning is unclear (even to November), but Hanley's boss eavesdrops, pronounces Hanley a threat to national security, and sends him to an institution for wayward government employees where heavy medication and electric fences assure his docile silence. Hanley's loyal colleague, Lydia Neumann, seems to be the only person who takes his side.

Who is November and why do so many people want him dead? How do the Russians know so much about him? Has he been betrayed by his former employer? For the first half of the novel, all we know with certainty is that November used to be a spy, one of the last of a vanishing breed. The novel introduces us to several others in and on the periphery of the spy game, all of whom are strong characters.

A part (but only a part) of "there are no spies" refers to the replacement of human operatives with signals intelligence, satellite surveillance, and other forms of spying that do not involve sending humans into the field. One of the novel's themes is the argument that humans interacting with humans can learn critical information that satellites cannot, and can give meaning and context to electronically gathered information that would otherwise be lost.

The spare elegance of Granger's prose and the emotional truth he gives to his characters makes The November Man stand out in the world of espionage fiction. If the plot is not as twisty and complex as some other spy novels might produce, it has the virtue of being tight, credible, and meaningful.

RECOMMENDED

The Ipcress File by Len Deighton

First published in 1962

The nameless hero of Len Deighton's early novels (known in the movie versions as Harry Palmer, The Ipcress File alludes only to the name Harry) is constantly fretting about his expense account and quarreling over back pay. He's a spy who doesn't appreciate being treated as a civil servant. His irreverent attitude pervades the early novels, which have a much lighter tone than Deighton's later, more substantial work.

Although The Ipcress File (1962) is the first of the Harry novels, it seems less dated than Billion Dollar Brain (1966). Harry is diverted from his current project -- tracking the elusive Jay -- to visit an atoll with other members of the British and American intelligence communities. Harry is blamed for an act of sabotage, accused of being a Hungarian double agent, imprisoned and tortured, all the while wondering about the identity of the real traitor, the person who set him up. Of course, the intricate (if convoluted) plot eventually works its way back to the evil Jay, adding more problems to Harry's beleaguered life.

To call the brainwashing scheme that underlies the plot of The Ipcress File farfetched would be to understate, but the novel is enjoyable despite the demand it makes on the reader to suspend disbelief. Had the tone been less tongue-in-cheek, the unlikely scheme would have been a more serious flaw, but the plot isn't meant to be taken seriously. The Ipcress File is a fun, energetic blend of intellect and action. The characters are the kind of well-educated Brits who can quote Milton from memory. Dialog is snappy and Harry has a dry, understated sense of humor that makes him a pleasure to know. Taken in the right spirit, The Ipcress File is a successful, if not particularly memorable, spy novel. Readers looking for serious spy novels by a talented author in his prime should investigate Deighton's Bernard Samson books.

RECOMMENDED

Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr

First published in the UK in 2011; published in the US in hardcover by Marian Wood/Putnam in 2012 and in paperback by Penguin in 2013

Noir is dark by definition, but Bernie Gunther is at his gloomiest in Prague Fatale. He's coping with the ugly events that marked him in earlier novels. It is 1941 and Bernie is back in Berlin. After harrowing experiences in Belorussia, feeling that he is merely "a blur" of the man he once was, Bernie entertains thoughts of suicide. When he looks at the mangled body of a man hit by a train, he sees himself. He is inspired to live only by the knowledge that so many Jews with so much less have soldiered on.

The mangled body is that of Geert Vranken, who came to Germany from Holland in search of employment. That his death was neither an accident nor suicide is clear from the multiple stab wounds that cover his torso. Bernie makes little progress in the death investigation until he saves a beautiful woman named Arianne Tauber from a mugging. Arianne eventually tells Bernie an intriguing story about an envelope she was hired to deliver that has now gone missing. The information causes Bernie to investigate the death of a Czech spy before he is summoned to Prague by General Heydrich, in whose pocket Bernie unwillingly resides. At that point Prague Fatale turns into a locked room murder mystery, giving Bernie a chance to exercise his considerable detective skills.

Because Prague Fatale is a murder mystery linked with a spy mystery, the plot is even more intricate than is common in the Bernie Gunther novels. The mystery's resolution isn't entirely unexpected but the setup is clever. A plot twist at the end is too often foreshadowed to be truly surprising, but it is nonetheless satisfying. A final twist seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought. The Nazi intolerance of (and hypocrisy toward) homosexuality is one of the novel's better themes, given that gay men are among the forgotten victims of Nazi tyranny.

By now, Bernie Gunther fans are so used to the character that his understandably bitter complaints about his life are taking on a broken record quality. He gives voice to his fears of what the Nazis are doing to him, and to Germany, so often that it becomes a numbing mantra. Prague Fatale would have been a tighter novel without the frequent repetition of Bernie's angst. Still, that's a relatively minor quibble. Bernie Gunther is who he is (as he often tells us), and that's what makes these novels so absorbing.

RECOMMENDED

Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on June 12, 2012; released as a trade paperback on June 4, 2013

Jack Warner of Warner Brothers sends Fredric Stahl, an Austrian-born American actor, to Paris, where he will star in a French-made movie. The timing is unfortunate for Stahl. It's 1938 and Germany is engaged in political warfare, using a variety of resources to persuade the French that it would be futile to resist Hitler. Stahl, who has no love of swastikas, would prefer to avoid discussions of politics, but Germany wants to use him as an instrument of propaganda while America wants to use him ... not as a spy, exactly, but as a source of information. About halfway into the novel, Stahl's role changes.

Whether he's describing the contents of a cruise ship newsletter or the streets of Paris, Alan Furst's attention to detail is impressive. Stahl makes brief trips to Germany, Morocco, Hungary, and Romania, but it is Paris that comes alive. The characters are well-rounded, and if not exactly memorable, they all seem real.

Mission to Paris didn't hold me in the clutches of suspense as do Furst's best books, but it is a solid, entertaining novel. A love story that starts as a subplot but eventually takes center stage is more credible than most spy novel love stories. The novel's weakness is that Stahl never seems to be in real danger. Action scenes are subdued. Stahl's ability to waltz to a happy ending, untouched by the intrigue that surrounds him, makes the story less than gripping. Still, the intricacies of political warfare are fascinating, and Mission to Paris never failed to hold my interest.

RECOMMENDED

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

Published by Scribner on June 4, 2013

"Two agents, both witting of the other, a single handler, the whole case directed by a mad scientist of a CI chief, two mole hunts -- and the added necessity of having to decide where to eat dinner." That sentence, appearing about three-quarters of the way into Red Sparrow, stands as a quick-and-dirty summary of an absorbing plot.

Red Sparrow begins with a traditional, but well executed, surveillance/chase scene. CIA agent Nathaniel Nash meets with a highly placed asset in Moscow, code named MARBLE, and manages to elude the FSB agents who stumble upon the meeting site. Vanya Egorov, First Deputy Director of the SVR, knows Nash met with someone, but doesn't know the traitor's identity. Nash has protected his asset but has blown his own cover.

After Nash is reassigned to Helsinki, the story shifts to Dominika Egorova, Vanya's niece, a determined woman who sees the colors that surround people. A detailed backstory explains how this oddly-wired woman became an SVR operative. It eventually becomes Dominika's mission (and Vanya's obsession) to trap Nash, to learn from him the identity of his Russian asset. Much of the initial fun in Red Sparrow derives from the chance to follow two intelligent intelligence officers as they try to recruit each other. The story eventually introduces a highly placed spy in the American government, the counterpart to MARBLE, but Nash and Dominika always remain the story's focus. About halfway through the novel, a conventional plot takes the sharp turn that separates jaw-dropping stories from those that are merely good.

A good spy novel needs moments of tension. Jason Matthews excels at those. He builds anticipation that instills serious teeth-gnashing as he places key characters in precarious positions. He makes palpable the anxiety endured by double agents who risk being unmasked. The last quarter of the novel is particularly intense. The plot thread concerning Dominika's relationship with Nash could have become trite (the stuff of trashy movies), but Matthews makes the emotions real while keeping the story fresh.

A good spy novel also needs good tradecraft, and the descriptions of tradecraft in Red Sparrow are exceptional. Spy novels often describe the schools in which the techniques of field work are taught, but I've never encountered such a thorough description of training in seduction, the clinical lessons imparted at Russia's Sparrow School. Although they detail the objectification and humiliation of women, the scenes are written with sensitivity and compassion.

The convincing portrayal of Dominika's roiling emotions, her evolving contempt for her masters, and Nash's evolution from a nakedly career-driven spy to a grounded human being make the lead characters in Red Sparrow memorable. Even minor characters are given full biographies. In fact, if Red Sparrow has a weakness, it is that so many characters are developed in so much depth that the novel is longer than it needs to be. Fortunately, it never drags, and that weakness disappears before the novel's second half.

Dominika's ability to see colored auras emanating from people is a little whacky for my taste, but that's the novel's only other misstep. Like real people, the characters spend some of their time eating. Their meals are described in mouth-watering prose. Rather incongruously, each chapter is followed by a recipe for some dish that is mentioned in the text. A chapter that ends with a dramatic death, for instance, jumps to a recipe for shrimp salad. The recipes are an odd addition to a spy novel, but people who have more culinary skill than I do might find them useful. In any event, they don't detract from one of the most impressive debut espionage novels I've encountered.

RECOMMENDED