An enjoyable seriocomic romp through the 1960s spy wars that leaves readers hoping for another installment.
A British travel writer turned hapless double agent is assigned to extricate a fellow two-way spy from the Soviet Union.
Set in 1964 at the height of the Cold War, the novel opens in Santa Monica, where Gabriel Dax meets with the elderly poet F.T. Falkner, a one-time member of British intelligence. The old poet knows that a former colleague from Bletchley Park peddled secrets to the Soviets during World War II. In this third volume of Boyd’s offbeat series, Dax must trade the sunny clime and gastronomical treats of Southern California to confront the newly exposed traitor Angus Fairford in Indianapolis; otherwise, the assignment seems easy enough. But things get complicated when Dax returns to England, where he continues his on-and-off affair with his shifty boss, Faith Green. This puts him in the sights of a gunman targeting Dax for killing the gunman’s brother—a sniper who had President Kennedy in his sights in Berlin. The action shifts to Moscow, where Dax meets up with his KGB handler, Varvara Suvorina, who acts oddly desperate. Here Dax runs into unexpected obstacles extricating Kit Caldwell, an MI6 hero who’d infiltrated the KGB while being honored as a prize defector. Though no one is as obsessed with appearances as Dax (he describes a woman’s “short-jacketed, carbon-black hopsack suit with a wide Peter Pan collar and black suede square-toed shoes”), his inward view is far less revealing. “How had this happened to him?” he asks himself. “What dark, grim swerve had his life taken?” A master storyteller in multiple genres, Boyd here employs a classic chronological approach, eschewing the usual time jumps to create the smoothest and breeziest of reads—one full of surprising turns and personalities.
An enjoyable seriocomic romp through the 1960s spy wars that leaves readers hoping for another installment.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780802168313
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Crime
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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