The Traitor by Ava Glass

Published by Bantam on September 19, 2023

Emma Makepeace is a predictable spy novel heroine. She volunteers for dangerous assignments, expresses her displeasure when her bosses want her to play it safe, disregards their instructions when she feels she is the only one who can complete the mission, outfights thugs, and exposes the mole. The existence of a mole is one of the plot elements that makes The Traitor predictable, but nothing about the story is fresh.

Emma is in MI6. Despite her success in Alias Emma, she feels her gender is a barrier to the assignments she deserves. She begins the novel by trying to catch a Russian who is laundering money through a British bank. Emma is pulled off that project and tasked with figuring out why a low-level MI6 number cruncher was murdered. The investigation brings her to a Russian oligarch who is suspected of selling chemical weapons. She joins the staff of the oligarch’s yacht with the hope she will find evidence of those sales.

Emma follows the usual path of an undercover agent. She takes risks to search the oligarch’s yacht-office, dodges the suspicions of the oligarch’s security thug, and befriends (uses) the oligarch’s gorgeous, bored, drug-addled girlfriend. The oligarch eventually learns that Emma is a government agent. While MI6 blames that discovery on Emma’s tradecraft, Emma is convinced that someone sold her out to the oligarch. Hence, the obligatory mole.

Later in the novel, Emma befriends (uses) another oligarch’s girlfriend. This oligarch is the boss of the oligarch whose yacht she infiltrated. Emma thinks that surveilling him will let her discover the mole. Well of course it will, and of course Emma’s plan places her in grave danger.

Emma has almost no personality. Her complaints about not being taken seriously because of her gender are at odds with the important assignments she receives. She feels unappreciated because she has sacrificed any semblance of a personal life to serve king and country. Her last relationship fell apart because she couldn’t tell her boyfriend why she was always jetting off without notice. Although she bemoans her fate, Emma manages a spark of romance with another MI6 agent. This leads to cheesy sentences like “With Jon, though, everything felt possible” — sentences that would be at home in a romance novel.

Fortunately, the cheese is not overdone. Unfortunately, the plot — including the identity of the mole — is entirely predictable. Emma outfights large thugs with blows that are only vaguely described and occasionally stabs them with a tiny knife. The plot is mundane, the action is underdeveloped, and the compulsory mole subplot is so obvious that the reader will guess the mole’s identity well before the reveal. Had the mole been anyone else, I might have recommended the novel without reservations. I thought Ava Glass might at least try to surprise the reader, but she makes no effort at all.

While Glass has technical ability as a writer, she fails todeliver the suspense and credible action that spy novels require. The Traitor is at best a time-killer for spy fiction fans who are waiting for a better novel to give them their espionage fix.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

"Black Vault" by Alma Katsu

Published on Kindle by Amazon Original Stories on August 8, 2023

“Black Vault” is a timely spy story — a longish short story — drawn from recent congressional investigations into UFOs. The timeline alternates between 2006 and the present.

Craig Norton is a career officer in the CIA. In 2006, his career is going nowhere. Norton is arrogant and cocky but he doesn’t have the success or pedigree to back up his attitude. He’s running an unimportant asset in the Russia Division. When the asset is transferred to an assignment in Mongolia, Norton follows him. The relocation places Norton under the supervision of the China Division. The China Division harbors an institutional hatred of the Russia Division. Norton is not made to feel welcome.

Norton arranges to meet his asset at night in the middle of a field. The asset never appears, but Norton sees some strange lights in the distance moving at angles and speeds that defy physics. With some trepidation, he writes a report about what he saw because reporting anything unusual is part of his job. After all, maybe he saw an experimental Chinese aircraft.

Norton is cautioned against submitting the report by a CIA officer who reviews reports and tells agents not to say anything stupid. Norton disregards the advice. Head of Station soon complains that Norton has become a laughingstock and has tainted the rest of the office by writing a report about a UFO. Craig learns that Alvin Lee, chief of the China Division, was particularly critical of his report.

Norton’s career comes to an abrupt dead end. He’s eventually reassigned to the US, where he’s given pointless tasks to fill his time until he reaches retirement age. Norton made the mistake of bringing his wife to Mongolia. She left him as a prelude to divorce. He never really connected with his son. He used the classified nature of his work as an excuse to avoid meaningful conversations.

A few months before he’s able to retire, Norton is assigned to a new task force that was formed in response to a 60 Minutes story exposing the government’s suppression of information about UFO sightings. The task force is composed of other deadenders until Norton mentions to the Deputy Director of Operations that the task force will never accomplish anything without young agents who haven’t lost their curiosity. After suitable agents are assigned, Norton begins to learn why his initial report was buried.

Modern spy fiction tends to develop the theme of bureaucracy and professional infighting as impediments to accomplishment. As Norton digs into the aftermath of his 2006 report, he discovers that people who took his report seriously went to war with bureaucrats who thought UFOs were embarrassing. The notion that UFOs might exist, that their secrets might be investigated by Chinese rather than American scientists, was a potential career killer for anyone who scoffed at Norton in 2006. Now it’s looking like the suppression of inquiry should have been a career killer. The theme of government agents stepping all over each other to cover their mistakes by blaming others is always fun, if only because it always seems plausible.

Craig’s relationship with his son comes across as an afterthought, a way of forcing human interest into the story, but Norton benefits from careful characterization in other ways. He feels abused, overlooked, and underappreciated, to some extent with good cause.

The plot is tight, as a short story plot should be. Alma Katsu was wise to develop her concept in short form. The concept may be insufficiently substantial to carry a novel. The story eventually leads to a resolution that will be familiar to fans of spy fiction, at least after the UFOs are set aside. The mixture of fresh and familiar makes “Black Vault” an enjoyable read for fans of spy fiction and UFO conspiracies.

RECOMMENDED

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry

Published by Atria Books on May 30, 2023

Spy novels are fundamentally about the betrayal of trust. The strategy of spying dictates that it is dangerous to trust. Yet spies must be trusted by their sources or the sources will not divulge valuable information. Determining the trustworthiness of sources and the information they provide is part of the espionage game. The Peacock and the Sparrow explores the difficulty of winning the game when spies base their assessment of trustworthiness on what politicians want to hear.

Shane Collins is an aging spy who has been posted to Bahrain. He is there in 2012, surrounded by rumors of the Arab Spring. Collins spends most of his time drinking, but he’s developed a source named Naqid. Collins trusts Naqid. The reader will wonder whether Collins is being played.

Collins’ head of station, Whitney Alden Mitchell, is the youngest station chief in CIA history. Mitchell has a strong sense of what his bosses want to hear. He specializes in giving them intelligence that makes them happy and assessing intelligence as unworthy of belief if his bosses won’t want to believe it.

Naqid is a member of “the opposition.” The opposition makes a nuisance of itself, throwing the occasional Molotov cocktail, as it protests the royals who govern Bahrain. There is good reason to protest the royals, as they have no regard for human rights. Yet the US supports them because the US perceives the enemy to be Iran and Bahrain is the enemy of that enemy. On the other hand, the opposition views westerners as infidels, despite Naqid’s apparent friendship with Collins.

A series of minor bombs near coffee shops frequented by Americans are blamed on the opposition. Mitchell has been told that the explosives were provided by Iran. Naqid tells Collins that the bombs were planted by the royals to win support from the Americans, including the lifting of sanctions so Bahrain can better respond to terrorist threats. Mitchell dismisses Naqid’s report because it isn’t what his bosses will want to hear. Could Naqid be telling the truth? Collins believes that what he’s saying makes a certain amount of sense.

The novel raises profound questions about whose side the US should take in the Middle East, or whether the US should be taking sides at all. Certainly, there’s truth in Naqid’s complaints that the ruling family suppresses dissenting voices and tortures prisoners, but the US is unreasonably tolerant of human rights violations that are committed by its allies. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that the opposition’s revolution will not be a favorable replacement for the ruling family. Sharia law is enforced overnight: assaults on liquor store owners, the imposition of strict dress codes, brothels burned, gay men shot, lawyers arrested. American expats who enjoyed cheap rent and cheaper sex are lining up to be evacuated. The CIA is shredding documents before the Embassy is overrun.

The plot follows Collins as he does some remarkably stupid things to assist Naqid, including dumping a dead body and picking up a package in Cambodia. Collins also continues a relationship with an artist named Almaisa after the CIA tells him she’s a security risk who needs to be kept at a distance. Why Collins makes such poor choices might be attributed to the fog of alcohol through which he perceives the world, although we don’t learn his true motivation for becoming the opposition’s courier until the novel’s end.

The Peacock and the Sparrow is unlike most spy novels in that the first-person narrator is not only unreliable but a poor excuse for a human being. Collins’ unreliability pertains to his inability to acknowledge his weaknesses. He drinks too much but denies his alcoholism. He justifies harmful acts by telling himself “I couldn’t have known.” He even asks himself, “What is knowledge?” Do we really know what we know? Collins indulges in philosophy to make his betrayals abstract and less important.

Collins’ first sexual encounter with Almaisa is pretty clearly a rape (he tears off her dress and apparently regards submission as consent) but, while he entertains a moment’s regret, he quickly convinces himself that he did nothing wrong. He meets women in brothels to confirm information he’s been given and, for no operational benefit, sleeps with them on the taxpayer’s dime. He punches Mitchell in the face, which clearly isn’t a wise career move. He tells himself he’s a good spy, but his tradecraft is lax (he doesn’t see a man who hits him on the head and robs him). He puts his hand on a gun that was used to shoot someone, one of several acts that potentially create incriminating evidence that could be used against him.

Collins’ paranoia seems to be sending him off the deep end. Is he being followed? Did someone break into his hotel room and search his luggage? Is Mitchell sleeping with Almaisa behind his back? All those things could be true, but they might be the alcohol-fueled imaginings of a mind that has lived too long in the darkness of espionage. The truth is not always clear, to either the reader or Collins, although most mysteries are resolved in the closing pages. A final twist sheds some light on who the novel’s greatest betrayer might be.

The novel builds tension as it nears its climax, particularly when Collins crosses borders and encounters checkpoints. Strong characterization is supported by observant prose and a grim but authentic sense of atmosphere in Bahrain and Cambodia. Collins isn’t likable but his messy life and dangerous liaisons are fascinating. The Peacock and the Sparrow is a skillful blend of history and fiction. It will certainly be among the best spy novels I’ll read this year.

RECOMMENDED

Moscow Exile by John Lawton

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on April 18, 2023

About twenty years have passed since 1948, when Joe Wilderness was selling black market coffee in East Germany. Some of that backstory is told in Hammer to Fall. That novel ended in a cliffhanger as Wilderness is shot on a bridge during a prisoner exchange in 1968.

Moscow Exile does not take up the story where Hammer to Fall left off. In fact, more than two hundred pages pass before Wilderness reappears. Moscow in Exile seems to meander but the story’s arc is purposeful. A circuitous path is sometimes the best route to an intended destination. Decades pass in the lives of characters both critical and collateral before their significance to the plot becomes apparent.

We meet the former Charlotte Young after she marries Hubert Mawer-Churchill. She leaves him when she falls for Avery Shumacher, but Hubert’s cousin Winston doesn’t blame her. He gives her a job in Naval Intelligence because of her ability to speak Russian. The job pleases her handlers; Charlotte is a Russian spy.

Charlotte goes by Coky after she marries Avery. He happens to be a wealthy American who is serving as Roosevelt’s eyes and ears in England. She moves to Washington D.C. with Avery when the war ends. After Avery’s unfortunate death, Coky marries Senator Redmaine, an early anti-communist crusader in the style of McCarthy. Coky detests the man but she’s following Moscow’s orders.

The other character of significance in the early going is Charlie Leigh-Hunt. Charlie is also spying for Russia, not so much for ideological reasons but because Moscow’s payments enhance his lifestyle. Charlie’s job, on the other hand, is to spy for MI6. He’s a bit worried because Burgess and McLean have been caught and Philby is on MI6’s radar. He’s shipped to Washington to replace Philby as head of station, the trusting British replacing one Russian spy with another. The CIA is less trusting.

On the voyage across the Atlantic, Charlie sleeps with Coky, having no idea who she is. He later discovers that she’s his new boss. or at least the conduit to his boss on the Russian side. All the more reason to sleep with her again, a practice he continues regularly. When the time comes to scamper to Russia, Charlie’s lifestyle becomes less indulgent, but the KGB officer in charge of him is attractive so he’s able to resume sleeping with the boss.

All of that is an absorbing background story that John Lawton spends half the novel telling. The balance of the story begins with Wilderness waking up in a hospital, having been shot at the end of the last novel. We learn that Wilderness is on a mission. The Russians treat him as a spy and potential defector after he’s taken to Moscow. The Russians don’t want him meeting with Charlie but it is a foregone conclusion that they will meet and share their secrets. The question is whether Wilderness will be able to make his way back to America.

Many of the secondary characters from the last novel resurface, including a British ambassador who would rather be raising pigs, a CIA agent who resembles a pig, and a couple of women who are far more competent than the men they replace. The story eventually circles back to Coky, tying all the plot threads together. There’s even another prisoner exchange on a bridge. What fun would a spy novel be without one?

Lawton has become one of my favorite modern spy novelists. His plots are realistic in that nothing ever goes according to plan. His characters are intelligent but flawed and for that reason interesting. His prose is a mixture of polished literary style and “Bob’s your uncle” colloquialisms. London, Moscow, and Washington D.C. are all described in atmospheric detail without bogging down the story. The plot builds tension after it comes into focus, but Lawton doesn’t depend on fight scenes or on-page violence to keep the story moving. I don’t know whether this novel brings an end to the Joe Wilderness series, but I look forward to reading whatever Lawton writes next.

RECOMMENDED

Red London by Alma Katsu

Published by ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons on March 14, 2023

Red London takes place after Putin, weakened by his fiasco in Ukraine, is replaced by Viktor Kosygin, another former KGB agent turned dictator. The richest Russian oligarch in London, Mikhail Rotenberg, has fallen into disfavor with Kosygin. Kosygin is demanding money from all the oligarchs but he seems to want everything Mikhail has. Mikhail survives when a Russian hit team invades his swanky London mansion, but the message has been sent.

In addition to Kosygin, the CIA, MI6, and parties unknown want to know where Mikhaiil's money is hidden. Lyndsay Duncan, a CIA agent starring in her second novel, is in London to run a Russian double agent (a subplot that drifts away without resolution). As long as she’s in London anyway, the CIA assigns Lyndsay to cozy up to Mikhail’s British wife Emily. Lyndsay finds it easy to infiltrate Emily’s circle of friends, as the circle is practically nonexistent. Apart from sending her to charity lunches that signal Mikhail’s standing among London’s elite, Mikhail shields his wife from the outside world. He only allows her to take their two kids on playdates where she can socialize with the judgmental wives of oligarchs. The British, including Emily’s parents, regard Russians as untrustworthy people who are ruled by “messily violent passions,” the antithesis of British Londoners who have eradicated passion from their very proper lives.

As gold diggers go, Emily is a reasonably sympathetic character. She comes from minor aristocracy. Maintaining the family estate is expensive and family wealth is dwindling. Emily knows that, unlike her siblings, she has average intelligence and no talent. If beauty is her only potential route to success, she might as well use it. Having caught Mikhail’s attention, she can’t find a practical reason to turn down a proposal from one of the world’s richest men. If he’s ruthless and a probable criminal in his business dealings, she doesn’t want to know about it. Emily might be a bit of a stereotype, but she is a stereotype with flesh. Sadly, she isn’t quite smart enough to understand that she will lose more than she will gain by bearing an oligarch’s children.

Lyndsay’s spy mission is complicated when she finds Emily keeping company with Dani Childs, a former CIA agent. Dani is working for a private company that hires former spooks. Dani also wants to get a handle on Mikhail’s wealth but she doesn’t know who hired the firm to obtain that information. Lyndsay also finds herself working with an MI6 agent who still carries a torch from the fling they had in Beirut. Those complications add spice to a modestly intriguing plot.

Lyndsay’s sympathy for Emily creates an interesting conflict between her duty to country (as her bosses see it) and her desire to help a woman who is stuck in a dangerous life. While Alma Katsu sprinkles in some gunfire as the predictable ending approaches, Red London is more a low-key spy/relationship novel than a thriller. Katsu makes token references to tradecraft but (apart from the occasional walkabout to expose tails) incorporates little into the story, depriving readers of the sense that they are reading about a field agent who has been trained at Langley rather than a bureaucrat who was told to do her best. Ultimately, the unchallenging plot and conventional ending of Red London are secondary to the relationships that give the novel its value.

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