The Bucharest Dossier by William Maz

Synopsis: Bill Hefflin is a man apart—apart from life, apart from his homeland, apart from love ...

At the start of the 1989 uprising in Romania, CIA analyst Bill Hefflin—a disillusioned Romanian expat—arrives in Bucharest at the insistence of his KGB asset, code-named Boris. As Hefflin becomes embroiled in an uprising that turns into a brutal revolution, nothing is as it seems, including the search for his childhood love, which has taken on mythical proportions.

With the bloody events unfolding at blinding speed, Hefflin realizes the revolution is manipulated by outside forces, including his own CIA and Boris—the puppeteer who seems to be pulling all the strings of Hefflin’s life.

~ ~ ~

I love espionage / spy thrillers and this one is right up there with some of my favourite authors.

It has been a while since I first read this and its sister book, but both still resonate. It is the story of a naive young CIA analyst caught up in a game played by those higher up for their own ends. A man, whose own life is shrouded in mystery and who is far from being honest with those around him, who is thrust into a world where identity is a commodity, loyalty questionable, corruption pervasive, and conspiracies abound.

The writing is slick, engaging, and ready to send you hither and thither during the years of revolution in Ceausescus' Romania of the 1980s. What fully immerses the reader in the narrative is the author's ability to posit parallels from his own early life into the text, giving such a sense of realism.

A great first book,which I followed immediately with the second - The Bucharest Legacy.

How To Keep Your Readers Coming Back for More

From Joanna Schaffhausen on CrimeReads:

Cracking open a new book in a detective series is like reuniting with old friends. If you want a protagonist who endures, give them plenty of problems both inside and out, a distinct life perspective and a specific geographic locale, a thirst for answers, and some entertaining (possibly furry!) sidekicks.

Joanna Schaffhausen takes the reader / writer through five essential character traits for your detective to keep readers turning pages long past book one.

read more here @ CrimeReads

Female Spanish thriller writer Carmen Mola revealed to be three men

From The Guardian:

A million euro literary prize has lured three Spanish men out of anonymity, to reveal that they are behind ultra-violent Spanish crime thrillers marketed as the work of “Spain’s Elena Ferrante”

The men had published under the pseudonym Carmen Mola, which roughly translates as “Carmen’s cool”.

When one of their books won the lucrative Planeta prize, the trio went public to pick up the cheque at a glitzy ceremony attended by the Spanish king.

Agustín Martínez, Jorge Díaz and Antonio Mercero had published novels and worked as scriptwriters under their real names before coming together to write as Mola. Credits include work on TV series “Central Hospital” and “Blind Date”.

Their lead character in the Carmen Mola novels is detective Elena Blanco, a “peculiar and solitary woman, who loves grappa, karaoke, classic cars and sex in SUVs”, according to publisher Penguin Random House.

The men, all in their 40s and 50s, denied choosing a female pseudonym to help sell the books. “We didn’t hide behind a woman, we hid behind a name,” Antonio Mercero told Spanish newspaper El País. “I don’t know if a female pseudonym would sell more than a male one, I don’t have the faintest idea, but I doubt it.”

read more here @ The Guardian

Harlan Coben, Suburban Dad With 75 Million Books in Print

From The New York Times:

The thriller writer Harlan Coben has some free advice for anyone who cares to ask: “If it produces pages: good. If it doesn’t produce pages: bad.”

With 32 published books and an estimated 75 million copies in print worldwide, he has produced many pages during the course of his career. His 33rd novel, “Win,” will be published by Grand Central on Tuesday. He recently added streaming media to his portfolio in the form of a 14-project deal with Netflix.

For all his success, Coben, 59, remains as unfussy as his favorite writing tip. A 6-foot-4 former college basketball player with a Bic’d head and an oeuvre full of kidnapping, murder and narrative twists, he is also a menschy suburban dad who likes to talk about his four children and dotes on his two shaggy Havanese, Winslow and Laszlo, who trail him around his New Jersey house like eager little mops.

Coben tries to stick to a schedule of publishing at least a book a year, a timetable he has kept up even as he’s added a new dimension to his working life: TV and streaming. In addition to Netflix, he has deals with Amazon Studios, MGM International and Apple.

read more here @ The New York Times

Revew: The Quarant by Graham Bullen

Synopsis: January, 1348. They say bad things come in threes...

The day after an earthquake and tsunami have ravaged Venice, Malin Le Cordier, a successful English maritime trader, sails into the city with plans to mature a coup on behalf of Edward III and Genoa. His time? Short. His guilt? Strong. Keeping the coup a secret from those he loves most weighs heavy on his soul. But Venice is a place with secrets and revenge flows through the city like its canals. For his sake and those he is bound to, it is best he learn to navigate it. And quickly.

Unbeknownst to Malin, there is someone powerful in the city who seeks revenge on Edward III on behalf of his family. Well-situated, he operates under covert circumstances, monitoring Malin’s every move - and playing his own long game, merely waiting for the perfect time to strike.

Combining greed and guilt, revenge and undeclared love, this is one trip that Malin may not live to regret.

Venice to the 14th Century. 

From the time of her 5th century foundation on Torcello, Venice has been unique - a small self-governing community of refugees, growing rich on its own audacious merits. In an attempt to preserve its republican identity, reforms were put in place to ensure that the position of the doge (who holds office until death) does not devolve into a hereditary signore. From the 11th century, the government of Venice and its colonies is removed from the sole personal responsibility of the doge and is transferred into the hands of powerful councils. The supreme body is the Great Council of 45 members, with ultimate responsibility for state affairs. On day-to-day matters an executive Minor Council of six members is appointed to guide the doge. Over the years Venice's councils grow and proliferate.

During the 13th century the Great Council expands from 45 members to 60 and then 100. A new Council of Forty is added at some time before 1223, followed by another body of 60 members with special responsibility for financial affairs; this is the Consiglio dei Rogati, known also as the Senate. A Council of Ten is added in 1310, to check on everybody else.  Though richly attired and publicly honoured, the Doge is essentially a powerless figurehead. The system is brilliantly devised to preserve the status quo in two ways - preventing the present doge's family from acquiring power and preventing the wider group of patrician families from losing it.

The doge is not allowed to engage in trade or any financial activity. No member of his family may hold office in government or serve on the councils. Safeguards are in place to prevent an election being rigged (the final group of electors is chosen by lot). Similarly stringent measures are introduced to prevent outsiders getting in. Between 1290 and 1300 the so-called 'closing of the Great Council' limits membership to those families which have provided members in the past. Oligarchy is thus enshrined, in a system which survived until the French Revolution. 

With a greater increase in trade, travel and pilgrimage to the eastern Mediterranean, Venice had the skills to provide the transport and already established trade concessions.  However, there is soon a strong rivalry from two other great maritime communes, Genoa and Pisa.  Both cities subsequently develop extensive trade in the western Mediterranean. Genoa also plays a large part in the crusades, establishing strong trading links in the eastern Mediterranean and coming into direct competition with Venice. Warfare between these two Italian city states is long and intermittent, with Venice by no means always the stronger - until the issue is finally resolved in 1380 at Chioggia when Venice finally defeats Genoa and becomes the undisputed maritime power in eastern waters.

The Black Death.

Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. As the disease took hold, Genoese traders fled across the Black Sea to Constantinople, Carried by twelve Genoese galleys, plague arrived by ship in Sicily in October 1347; the disease spread rapidly all over the island. Galleys from Kaffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348 with devasting effect, spreading across Europe and into Scandinavia by 1350, and finally Russia in 1351. The disease spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. Within two years (1348-1439), plague had spread throughout the Islamic world, from Arabia across North Africa.

Review

A merchant ship from Dieppe arrives in Venice after a devastating earthquake and tsunami have struck the city.  On board, a man with an agenda known only to a few.  We follow this merchant, Malin Le Cordier, as he and his associates play a deadly political game with La Serenissima - the price of failure being exceedingly high, the chance of betrayal overwhelming. 

The story evolves over a period of forty days - the Quarant - or the period of time a merchant vessel arriving in Venice will spend in quarantine. We accompany the main characters through the highs and lows of their conspiracy, which culminates in the final, thrilling betrayal. 

Bullen's attention to detail in describing both the physical and political landscape is superb, and we experience the sense of urgency as the characters do as we are propelled towards zero hour. 

The characters represent the medieval melting-pot that was Venice.  We have Malin and Symon, Bourchier and Mainard from England (and Scotland); the native Venetians; Florentine spies, and German mercenaries. Yet it is with Malin that the reader will find themselves centred.  The conspirators are akin to the spoked wheel - Malin is the hub from which all others - the radiating rods - are connected.

The roles and motivations of those involved in the conspiracy is gradually revealed, as plans coalesce, and the danger of discovery becomes greater every day.  The reader finds their own pulse racing as events take a turn, this way and that.

Venice is a city run on secrets - and I have provided some links below for further exploration into England's dealings with Venice, espionage and diplomatic relations, and well as some other themes that are running through the narrative.

This is period of history is one in which I am fairly well read and it was highly enjoyable to read a thrilling (fictional) account set in medieval Venice, with quite a decent dose of authenticity.

further reading:

- The Economic History of Venice
- Secret Venice: The Council of Ten and Medieval Espionage
- Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 1, 1202-1509
- Hanseatic League
- Venice & Its Minorities
- Battle of Dupplin Moor
- Plague In Venice

Review: Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev

Synopsis: In 2018, a former Russian secret agent and his daughter were poisoned with a lethal neurotoxin that left them slumped over on a British park bench in critical condition. The story of who did it, and how these horrendous contaminants were developed, captivates and terrifies in equal measure. It has inspired acclaimed author Sergei Lebedev’s latest page-turning novel. At its center is a scheming chemist named Professor Kalitin, obsessed with developing an absolutely deadly, undetectable and untraceable poison for which there is no antidote. He becomes consumed by guilt over the death of his wife, the first accidental victim of his Faustian pact to create the ultimate venom, and the deaths of hundreds of test subjects. After he defects from the Soviet Union to spend his “retirement” years in the West, two Russian secret agents are dispatched to assassinate him. In this fast-paced, genre-bending novel, Lebedev weaves tension-filled pages of stunningly beautiful prose exploring the historical trajectories of evil. From Nazi labs, Stalinist plots, the Chechen Wars, to present-day Russia, Lebedev probes the ethical responsibilities of scientists supplying modern tyrants and autocrats with ever newer instruments of retribution, destruction and control. Lebedev, one of Russia’s most important and exciting writers, has never been better.

This really is the tale of assassination. We open with an assassination and we finish with one.

It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of the narrative style of the author, and to be honest, I nearly put it aside (I wasn't really sure where this was set - ie: locations - and what time period - though guessed late 20th / early 21st century). However, upon persevering, it became quite a good story. 

Chemical and biological warfare is nothing new in the spying game, but we only ever hear of the main players - the victims, the politicians - we never read about the creators of these fiendish weapons. Lebedev does just that - we are taken into the private world of a defecting scientist who has created the perfect, untraceable, weapon, as he grapples with his current lot in life and wonders whether the grass was actually greener on the other side. Played against the chemist Kalitin, the prey in this cat and mouse game, is the soldier - the hunter - Lt Colonel Shershnev. He too grapples with his past as he and his companion embark on their mission.

The narrative alternates between Kalitin and Shershnev as each recall events in their past that have led to this point in time. There is not thrilling chase scenes (Bourne style) - well, not to we get towards the end.

Not your standard espionage novel - but definitely one to read.

See also:

- Spy Assassinations: Top 5 Deadly Poisons

- The Devilish Art of Assassination

- List of Soviet & Russian Assassinations

Review: The Career Killer by Ali Gunn

Synopsis: When a serial killer poses a woman wearing a wedding dress in one of London’s most beautiful gardens without being seen, all eyes fall on newly-promoted DCI Elsie Mabey’s team of misfits as they investigate their first case together.  Nobody else wants the case and nobody wants the team she’s forced to work with. Her subordinates are the opposite of the Met’s finest; they’re the “not quite fired” of London policing.  Can this ragtag band pull together to catch a killer or will their failure be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

When I first read the synopsis with the line "they’re the “not quite fired” of London policing", I thought, this sounds a bit like the TV series "Old Tricks" - which I love - so thought I would give it a go.

What I found was a story line featuring a a newly promoted DCI Elise Mabey and her team of three: the experienced DS Patricia Knox, the naive DS Georgia Matthews, and the newly transferred DI Sebastian Stryker - not quite "Old Tricks" but possibly those no others wanted on their teams (for whatever reasons).

So the each of the characters - lets start with DCI Elise Mabey. Newly promoted to DCI she is keen to step out of the shadows of her more famous policeman father and make a name for herself on her own terms - " ... she needed this case ... she needed the chance to prove, once and for all, that she earned her command ... ". Added to this is the added pressure of suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) - leaving her tired, irritable and not in the mood to suffer fools.

Elise is joined by the newly transferred DI Sebastian Stryker - in Yorkshire he was a big fish in a small pond, now in London, he finds that he really is a small fish and must prove himself deserving of his place. We often, however, find him at odds with his boss, much to her chargrin.

Our two Detective Sergeants could not be any more different - DS Patricia Knox is - quite frankly - ob-knox-ious! A veteran officer who was up for the position Elise secured, Knox makes no bones about her feelings - though a past indiscretion was the cause of her downfall. She is jealous, disruptive, and working to her own agenda. Then lastly we have DS Georgia Matthews - the youngest, most inexperienced, and easily led of the team. Knox has taken her under her wing - and begins to lead her astray.

Others who feature include the Crime Scene Manager, Annie Burke; Chief Pathologist, Valerie Spilsbury (named after legendary Sir Bernard Spilsbury, eminent British Pathologist I wonder); and DCI Fairbanks - Mabey's co-worker, rival, and the epitome of the lazy cop.

DCI Mabey soon finds herself in charge of a serial killer case and picks up an additional caseload from Fairbanks. Mabey laments that " ... she needed to pull this useless team of hers together to get justice ... " - but will this motley crew be able to solve this case before imploding.

I found the narrative intriguing and it held my attention. The procedural aspects were detailed as we move with the team as they discover and investigate, experiencing the highs and lows of the investigation. We also get a bit of the sense of the behind the scenes politiking within the police force, especially between Mabey and Fairbanks.

I did feel that a couple of aspects contained within the narrative to be rather questionable - particularly Knox going off to participate in another case - would this have happened in real life - I personally could not say, but as a reader I found it a little unbelievable. There were times when I found myself questioning the main characters and their actions as well - they were not only disfunctional but disobendient, doing as they pleased often ignoring Mabey's directives, which shows weakness on her part, leaving the reader to question whether she really is deserving of her promotion. At least the characters weren't portrayed as "peter perfects" but were flawed, human.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and I would be interested in reading more from this author and from this series. 

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Review by Oline H. Cogdill (Associated Press) in Lincoln Journal Star:

Lust, deceit and the simple quest for happiness rule the plot as "Sunburn" works well as an homage to Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Anne Tyler. Lippman delves into a study of contrasts with a story that's as cynical as it is hopeful, a look at hearts of darkness coupled with a domestic thriller. 

The 1995 setting also adds to the intense character studies — with no cellphones or social media to cloud each persona. Characters are seeking their identities yet submerging themselves with layers of duplicity. In the hard-boiled vein, Lippman takes the femme fatale — the linchpin of novels such as "Double Indemnity" — and puts a modern spin on this archetype, then turns it upside down.

The ingenious plot evolves into myriad twists that are as believable as they are surprising. Lippman's tight control on "Sunburn" delivers one of the year's most intriguing mysteries.

read more here @ Irish Times and @ LA Times 

Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer

Review by Jeff Ayres in Mercury News:

A plane crash unveils a vast covert government operation with ties to master escape artist Harry Houdini in “The Escape Artist,” Brad Meltzer’s latest thriller.

Then she replayed those last few minutes before she got on board. Oh, God. Now it made sense. Her stomach was up in her throat. The VIPs at the front of the plane were now screaming. She knew why this plane was going down. This wasn’t an accident.

Meltzer weaves a stellar tale of history, government-insider knowledge, and thrills to deliver his best book in years. At times the violence is intense — and the villains are borderline comic book — but Meltzer’s steady hand knows how to balance a fine line between compelling and discomforting. Since Zig and Nola are both artists in their own unique way, the visuals and narrative are even more intense than one would expect in a thriller.

“The Escape Artist” is the rare novel that one wants to read fast while also needing to go slow to savor every word.

read more here @ Brad Meltzer