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

The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry

Published by Mysterious Press on May 21, 2013

The Shanghai Factor is not Charles McCarry's best effort, but even a lesser McCarry novel is entertaining. This one is as much a mystery novel as a spy story, but it never quite develops the suspense and intrigue that fans of those genres crave.

A new agent, assigned as a sleeper in Shanghai, immediately breaks the rules by taking on a girlfriend he knows only as Mei. The unnamed agent assumes Mei is a spy but he likes the sex so he doesn't much care. Circumstances force the agent to leave China, but he soon returns with a new assignment: to set up Guoanbu operatives so they will be denounced as American spies. The operation appears to fizzle out, as does (to his great disappointment) his relationship with Mei. Back in New York, the encounters a Chinese operative who attempts to recruit him. Eventually it becomes difficult to know whether he can trust anyone, as each person who plays a significant role in his life might be a potential enemy, including the various women he beds at home and abroad. He becomes a pawn in a game played by two men "of mystery and power," one in Washington and one in China, all the while kept in the dark about the true nature of the game.

This is familiar ground for a spy novel, but the story is well told, often moving in unexpected directions. Most of it is credible, although some events near the novel's end seem both forced and implausible. McCarry maintains the novel's pace and the story is never dull. McCarry's observational talent is on full display, whether he's describing filth floating on the Yangtze or the curves of lover's body. His thoughts about the selective and uncertain nature of trust are not new to the genre, but they're well phrased. The same can be said of his observations about the power of coincidence and its relationship to fate.

For all its interest, however, the story is surprisingly light on suspense. The mystery's resolution is reasonably satisfying but not particularly surprising. The Shanghai Factor is the work of a supremely capable technician, but it lacks the "wow" factor that the best spy novels (and mysteries) produce. The agent is a well-defined character but not one I found myself caring much about. None of those complaints prevented me from enjoying the novel, but they prevent me from shelving it in the first tier of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on May 7, 2013 

Dead Lions has everything a good spy novel needs -- intrigue, strong characters, crafty tradecraft, byzantine plotting, sharp prose -- with the addition of a healthy dose of humor. The heroes (if you could call them that) are slow horses: Intelligence Service officers who aren't trusted with serious work, assigned to Slough House in the hope that they will retire or die of boredom.

Dickie Bow, a former spook with a drinking problem who went off the books after the Cold War ended, spots a Moscow hood in London and, acting on instinct, follows him. While riding a bus a couple of seats behind the hood, Bow dies, apparently of a heart attack. Jackson Lamb, in charge of Slough House, investigates Bow's death, while his employees are diligently avoiding productive work -- not that they're ever given productive work to do. The slow horses are an engaging group of misfits, and as the novel unfolds, we get to know them all. We even start to like them ... most of them, anyway.

The Cold War is over, but as Lamb investigates Bow's death, he begins to wonder whether there are Russian spies who didn't get the memo. Particularly the greatest spy of all, a legend who never existed -- unless he did. Lamb's minions at Slough House aren't particularly suited for field work, but Lamb decides to mount an operation that will get to the bottom of Bow's (presumed) murder and a (presumably) long-dormant scheme involving sleeper agents. Meanwhile, without Lamb's knowledge, two slow horses are borrowed from Slough House and tasked with creating a security plan for an upcoming meeting with a Russian industrialist. As you would expect, these plot threads eventually join into a single strand.

I've read any number of spy novels that are more somber than this one without being half as clever. The plot is both wild and wickedly smart. It's also more believable than the plots in many novels that are meant to be taken more seriously. Mick Herron writes in a tone of perfectly understated sarcasm that never fails to amuse. At the same time, he manages to tell a conventional spy story that is sometimes heart-warming and always intriguing. Toward the end, he delivers the excitement of a thriller. All of that, coupled with the cast of quirky characters, make me want to read the novel that introduced the slow horses.

RECOMMENDED

The Tango Briefing by Adam Hall

First published in 1973

The Tango Briefing is the fith in a series of spy novels featuring a British agent named Quiller written by Elleston Trevor using the pen name Adam Hall.  A recon flight returns pictures of something in the Algerian desert that might be an airplane. Because its suspected cargo would be dangerous in the wrong hands, Quiller is dispatched to "take a close look at the bloody thing." And bloody is just what he gets, as one would expect from a Quiller novel. He also battles dehydration, exhaustion, and the constant threat of death as he shakes off surveillance, dodges bullets, and parachutes into the desert where vultures are hoping to have him for lunch.

Quiller is a fun character. Of all the fictional spies, Quiller is probably the least likable -- and that's what makes him so easy to like. He's testy, quarrelsome, disgruntled, a loner who loathes everyone, particularly his bosses. Most of the time he behaves like a jerk, but he gets the job done. Quiller survives by relying upon his intellect, a sharp mind that is constantly at war with his instinct and the demands/fears of a body he refers to as "the organism." If often seems as if Quiller wishes he weren't burdened with frail limbs and human emotions, that he would be happier as an analytical robot.

I love the refined-but-tough first-person prose Adam Hall uses to narrate Quiller's story. His surging sentences are perfectly timed, reflecting the anxiety and restlessness of a spy waiting for the action to start. And once it starts, it's unrelenting. Action scenes are intense, particularly those that take place in the desert. They left me feeling parched. The Quiller novels aren't in the same class as the best spy fiction, but they're smart, gripping, and thoroughly entertaining. The Tango Briefing is one of the better ones.

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