Library Limelights 199

Joseph Kanon. Defectors. USA: Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2017.

Two brothers in 1961: One, head of a New York publishing company. The other, an ex-CIA agent ‒ a defector living in Russia. At the height of the Cold War, the Russians are allowing publication of Frank's memoir of his days as a double agent during the war ‒ suiting their propaganda purposes ‒ promising to become a bestseller. The shock waves of Frank's defection were global, with the most appalling effect on his American family. When publisher Simon goes to Moscow to review the manuscript, he's not sure what to expect, but Frank is still a committed Communist and as socially charming as ever. Frank, still working for "the Service" (KGB), and wife Joanna live among other traitors such as Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, never fully trusted by the Russians. The insertion of real-era people adds that extra punch to an extremely convincing tale of double- and triple-crosses.

Why did Frank really agree to write his memoir? Why did Simon (childhood nickname "Jimbo") really want to see his brother the traitor again? Boris, Frank's minder, shadows their conversations and sightseeing tours, not suspecting the convoluted plans underway. The circumscribed lives of these former spies breeds gossip and paranoia. Each brother has a secret plan, not necessarily aligned, strewn with last-minute obstacles; the reader is dizzily second-guessing like mad. Leading to a breathtaking climax, five people in a car present the most gripping drama, ever. Kanon creates Cold War espionage for grownups. Fans of the late Philip Kerr, do not miss Kanon!

One-liners:

▪ Had he seen it in Simon's face, the eyes opening behind the blur? (197)

▪ Simon felt the car closing around them, windows trapping them inside, unable to move, Frank at the other end. (263)

▪ "So we leave midnight?" Simon said, trying to form a timeline in his head, Frank ahead of him again. (196)

Multi-liners:

▪ "Thank God for Guy. He's always up for anything. But then always making scenes." (25)

▪ It occurred to him then, looking around the dreary courtyard, that they had all thrown their lives away, everything they thought they would be. Or maybe Frank had done it for them. (54-5)

▪ "Don't go soft on me, Jimbo. I need you. To make it work." (100)

▪ So Boris didn't snore after all. Unless he was lying awake too, listening. (233)

▪ "The Gulf. It's on the left. It should be on the right. You're on the wrong road." (258)

Unexpected insight:

"I never thought you'd come. Why did you?" 

"It's easier than doing it by mail. Working on the book." 

"No, I mean why did you agree to do it? After he spied on you. Do you need the money?" 

"So far the money's only going one way," he said, trying to be light, move away from it. 

"No. I know you," Joanna said, holding up her glass, a pointing finger. "Something else. I'll bet you were curious. You couldn't wait to see—what a mess we made of everything." 

"Joanna—" Frank said. 

"I'll bet that's it. What happened to them? After all that? I know I'd be curious. But why come? Isn't it all in the book?" (33)

Frank's past:

"You know what it felt like? Years you're looking through a kaleidoscope, everything mixed up. And then one turn and all the pieces fall into place. Everything makes sense. The way things are. The way they should be. That's where it began. Before that didn't matter." 

"So one turn and you're a Russian spy." 

"Spy. That's somebody looking through peepholes. Like a house detective. I was an agent. Of the Party. The Service." He looked over. "I still am. Is that so hard to understand?" 

"You'd make it a lot easier if you told people who you were before, why everything clicked into place in Spain." (64)

Sightseeing Novodevichy cemetery:

Outside they took the path nearest the wall. 

"Stalin's wife," Frank said, pointing to one of the graves. "You can tell Boris you saw it. The writers are down here." 

They were walking quickly, hurrying to the entrance. Out of the corner of his eye Simon could see a woman with a headscarf at the far end, kneeling at one of the graves, but she didn't turn. They were still invisible. 

"I can't stay here," Simon said suddenly. "I have to get out before they—" 

Frank stopped, holding him by the shoulders. "Listen to me. By the time they find him they won't be able to establish time of death. He said he lived down the street. This is just the kind of place he'd use—to meet people." He gripped Simon's shoulders. "No one saw us." (143)

Mick Herron. The Last Voice You Hear. 2004. USA: Soho Press, Inc., 2015.

Herron's pre-Slow Horses days: the second in a four-novel series with missing persons-finder Zöe Boehm and her friend Sarah Tucker. After returning a runaway boy to his parents, Zöe is hired by a businessman to locate the boyfriend of his accidentally deceased secretary Caroline. The man has vanished, his identity proving false. Zöe senses a killer/stalker in this case, finding a similar example. Her thoughts turn partly into a study of middle-aged women living alone, of which Zöe is an anomaly. Alas, she is haunted by her then-rude scorn of the runaway's thieving companion Wensley, who three years later is dead (by accident? murder?) at the age of twelve. She can't help following up on his death, at least with the boy's grandfather.

Always in distant touch with the domesticated Sarah, that's where Zöe flees, battered, when sinister forces almost kill her. Nevertheless, it's an invitation to a showdown of hopeless proportions, keeping you glued to the pages. Why they want to get rid of her, whether the stalker will finally appear, Zöe doesn't know. She and Sarah and Russell, Sarah's husband, are outnumbered and do their best to outwit them. Ostriches are involved. Under extreme pressure, Zöe's fears of cancer are forgotten. Herron shows his uncommon ability to create a female character; lots of suspense, less of the same humour that comes to the fore in his later works.

One-liners:

▪ When it came to patience, strategy and multi-tasking intelligence, child rearing was like running a small country single-handed. (92)

▪ Zöe felt loaded down by her recent past, as if forced to shoulder it in laundry bags; images of robbed and soaking men had soured her rest. (215)

▪ Then a gunshot, and dust arose around her, and danced in the spears of light through the fissures in the walls. (234)

▪ Bolognese sauce splashed everywhere: if it had been paint, you could have called this decorating. (269)

Multi-liners:

▪ This was part of the life-process that carries on regardless, the way hair appears to grow in the coffin. You sicken, you die, and the junk mail continues. (57)

▪ Evel Knievel was once asked what it was like, being in a coma. "How would I know?" he'd replied. "I was in a fucking coma." (136-7)

▪ But running without stopping was for champions. Zöe was a smoker. Boy, was she a smoker. (171)

▪ Russell cast a look at Sarah. There was nothing in it she recognized as his, though she caught its colours: hurt, loss, anger. (233)

Missing:

It was Zöe's experience that finding people was harder when they didn't know they were missing. There was a whole category of people liable to fall off the edge of the world; whose grip on contemporary reality, never marvellous to begin with, was weakened further by what, to others, might appear no more than the average slights—and then they were gone. They didn't know where they were going, so wouldn't recognize it when they got there, and left no clues as to where it was. Often, theirs wasn't a journey so much as an act of divestment; a shedding of all that had anchored them in the first place: mortgages and bank accounts, mobile phones and credit cards, enmities and friendships—something snapped, or something else got stronger. (26)

Life's fragility:

This, or something like it, had done for Caroline Daniels: a Tube train was smaller, of course, but that was like weighing the difference between a bus and an articulated lorry when you were underneath one. And she wondered what it would be like, to step out in front of this juggernaut—no, not step, be pushed, even if that push was was the involuntary swelling of the crowd behind. There must have been a moment during which Caroline Daniels had known everything. And then it met her: her travelling death. The way it happened for Wensley Deepman, except in his case, he'd been doing the travelling ... But it did not matter, in the end, whether what you collided with was irresistible force or immovable object. Something had to give, and—in the end—that would be you. 

Hard landings teach us we are flightless things. (42)

Imagining the victims:

She'd watched a bird once, frozen to a lawn, a cat hooked round it like a tarpaulin—one forepaw blocking its flight; the other stroking it gently, head to tail. If she hadn't known what she was seeing, she might have taken it for tenderness. (106)

Her late husband's tips:

Visualize your goal. Didn't Joe used to say that? Along with Understand your own strengths and Learn to grow, grow to learn. Whatever he'd picked up from Reader's Digest, really. What she needed to do now was visualize herself reaching the door unscathed; see herself stepping through and locking it behind her. (270)

Chris Pavone. The Expats. USA: Crown Publishers, 2012.

With a first novel, Pavone enters the thriller big leagues in an impressive way. Dexter, a whiz in cyber intricacies, moves wife Kate and family to Luxembourg to work in the banking sector. But the married couple keep secrets from each other, secrets that may be unravelling when Kate is convinced they are being watched. Dexter doesn't know that Kate has serious history as an operative for the CIA in Latin America, a job she's now left. On the surface, Kate plays the laidback wife and mother with dozens of other women in the expat community. But their new best friends may be the watchers; she suspects they are FBI agents. Not only is Kate trying to outwit them without revealing she knows ‒ either to them or to her husband ‒ she begins to suspect Dexter's job is a lie. In fact she has only the vaguest idea of what he actually does.

She doesn't know if it's her history or Dexter's that instigated an investigation. We are sucked into high tech, high stakes, internet banking fraud. With a side or two of, perhaps, justifiable homicide. Everyone, of course, is lying to each other. And it seems no one is impervious to the temptation of money — or is the appeal simply in the execution of accessing it? Development of the story shifts oh-so-cleverly between "the present" and the recent past ‒ the move to tax haven Luxembourg ‒ all from Kate's POV. It's a zinger. Happy to see Pavone has published more since.

One-liners:

▪ It's tough to be angry with someone for lying while you yourself are also lying, for the same exact reasons. (32)

▪ This was her man, the one who didn't just want her but needed her, and not just passingly but desperately. (63)

▪ She needed friends, and a life, and this is how you acquired these things: by talking to strangers. (40)

▪ Now that Kate possesses this new information, now that the yearbook has given up its secret, now that Kate recognizes this new reality, she feels unparalleled betrayal. (114)

▪ There were so many people to be assassinated for so many reasons. (117)

Multi-liners:

▪ "He's a systems security expert, specializing in transactional software for financial institutions." This is the line she'd internalized. (41)

▪ This was the specific type of dreadful feeling that she'd hoped to avoid by quitting the Company. The exact type of lie for which she'd thrown over her whole career not to utter. (128-9)

▪ The couriers would be leaving Europe with clean cashier's checks. So the FBI agents were keeping records; they were building a case. (134)

▪ "Because if anyone was after you, it'd be us," Hayden said. "It'd be me." (137)

CIA creds:

She fit the profile perfectly. Her only drawback was that she wasn't especially patriotic. She'd felt betrayed by her country's abandonment of her parents, who were essentially left to die because they were poor. Capitalism was heartless. America's social safety net was woefully insufficient, and the results were inhumane, barbaric. After a dozen years of Republican hegemony, society was becoming more stratified, not less. Bill Clinton hadn't accomplished anything yet beyond battering the world with the word hope. (45)

Her own tangent:

It continued to feel good, to be on this mission in Berlin. Even if there was a chance that the mission was entirely in her imagination. Maybe this is what had been missing in her life, why she felt so bored, so worthless, so unhappy. (130)

Ultimatum:

"I don't want you to explain. I want you to convince me I'm wrong. Or admit I'm right." 

Kate already knew the truth; that wasn't what she was hoping to hear now. The first thing she wanted to learn was whether Dexter would deny it. Whether he would make the choice to add more lies. Whether all hope was lost. 

And for a split second, standing there fifty feet above the stone-paved path, Kate also wondered, however irrationally, whether Dexter would try to kill her, right now. (266)