Freshly Spying Out the Cold War, in Tense New Espionage from Paul Vidich, THE MERCENARY

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Vidich carries the wintry mood of Soviet menace and danger powerfully, and his plot twists are tight and all too believable. “

The third espionage novel from Paul Vidich, The Mercenary, slides back to six years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moscow provided a frightening standoff of Soviets and Americans, and the notion of an American president being a “friend” of a Soviet leader couldn’t even be considered as a political move. With George Mueller, a CIA agent rolling out of the embassy and into a late-in-life mission to meet a new Russian spy, the moment is all about rational fear and determination.

But Mueller’s nighttime adventure hits a swift end in police hands, betrayed somehow, and when the Soviet source comes back into contact with the “Agency,” that person has one unconditional demand: that the new American case officer drawn in to connect with him in the future be Aleksander Garin.

Garin is the “mercenary” of the book’s title. Burned by a betrayed operation of his own on Soviet ground, when he’d lost the life of the general he was trying to assist out to freedom, he’s retreated to a New York City life of increasing despair and loss, taking short assignments that he can’t explain to his wife, with little continuity or satisfaction. The call to the new assignment arrives when he has nothing else to hold him. So he lands back in a nation he’d never expected to see again.

“Garin didn’t talk on the drive in. … There was something illusory about time and space that in the moment made him feel as if he’d never left the Soviet Union. The low visibility darkened his mood and reminded him of the morning he’d been forced to flee. It haunted him that he hadn’t seen, or chose to ignore, the obvious dangers. … Nothing has changed, he thought. But things were different. He was older, with a scar on his neck, another name, and a new assignment.”

Garin’s return to the Soviet Union is by definition perilous, with all the odds against him. His own identity as some sort of Russian himself will slowly unfold over the course of his mission—but there’s no question that somewhere in the Soviet files, his image and story are well documented, and he’s in danger from this moment on, in Moscow.

Vidich carries the wintry mood of Soviet menace and danger powerfully, and his plot twists are tight and all too believable. Garin’s forced progress from one crisis to the next reveals much more than his Russian self and his past failure, however: The new “source” has asked for Garin not by name, but as the person who’d failed to get the general out. The forced play is intended to dig into Garin’s own self-image and presumed longing to redeem himself, after such a colossal failure. His new contact, “Gambit,” is counting on Garin to get things right this time. Redemption.

But espionage is a landscape where nothing’s likely to be or go right. Everyone involved knows this. George Mueller himself struggles to protect Garin from the self-serving manipulations of his own “side,” while the KGB maneuvers to find out who’s now leaking secrets to the Americans, and to make sure there are no long-term rewards for such actions.

For readers new to espionage and to the climate of the dangerous Cold War, Vidich’s book provides a fast-moving and emotionally powerful ride into the darkness of both spying and the battered soul. The book’s effect on seasoned readers in this genre may be very different, however, since two questions insist on being addressed: Why title the book The Mercenary when, even from Aleksander Garin’s first step on Soviet soil, it’s clear he’s engaged for far different motives than money? (Is there a true mercenary anywhere in this book?) And second, inescapably, why has Vidich named his protagonist “Alek” when the book’s closest parallel is The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the John Le Carré classic that lures Alec Leamas into tragedy?

Ultimately, the deepest and most painful conflict in The Mercenary becomes whether Alek Garin must meet the same ending as Alec Leamas. Vidich holds the issue in fierce suspense all the way through this standalone thriller. 

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Boston Noir With a Dangerous "Backbeat" in Clea Simon's WORLD ENOUGH

She's quietly brought us four different semi-mystical cat and amateur sleuth mystery series over the past decade -- and some edgy nonfiction before that. Now Boston author Clea Simon lets her inner rock 'n roller out of the back room and rips into a dark and compelling murder mystery of Boston's music nightlife in WORLD ENOUGH, due to release on November 1.

The book roots in Simon's own passion for rock 'n roll and the feisty bands that brought original rock to "the scene." She's been a denizen of that world herself -- check out her moody and detailed article from this past summer, reviving memories of the Kenmore Square nightclub called the Rathskeller, better known as "the Rat":

When R.E.M. wanted to play a club, the night after headlining a show at Harvard, they dropped in on the Rat. When David Bowie and Iggy Pop were in town for a gig at the Harvard Square Theater in 1977 and wanted to hear some music, they hung out there. Although the club’s reputation had declined before its 1997 closing, by then the grungy music room had hosted the likes of The Police, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, Joan Jett, Husker Du, Metallica, and a thousand local bands — including some, like The Cars, that would go on to worldwide fame. [Read the whole article here.]

Tara Winton's on a nostalgia trip of sorts, when she hangs out in a local club to hear a music group from the old days, the Whirled Shakers. Their music "still gets her going," even though she knows she's part of an aging group of fans who miss the old locales that have long since become condos, parking garages, the new city where youth and love flourish. The groupies may still own leather jackets, but their hair's gone gray and they look, hmm, kind of out of shape if they get up to dance. There's a long route back to the good old days, but the passage is one way only and Tara is grieving.

Soon there's more than just the "scene" to mourn -- one of the musicians, Frank, is dead, supposedly some strange form of suicide, and Tara needs to attend the funeral. Reflecting on the crowd that still shares these moments of her life, Tara has to admit: "We're sickly. We have fewer successful marriages and happy families. Too many of us have died."

But it's just a matter of bad luck, isn't it? Like Frank's death?

Maybe not. And when Tara accepts a journalistic assignment to retrace the old bands and track down the players -- both the musicians and the most vital of their groupies -- she begins to realize she's missed a lot of signals over the years. Things were never as safe or loving as she wanted to believe. Even her own ex-husband is pulling away from her friendship now, leaving her newly vulnerable as she pries apart the old frictions and competitions, to find out what's now going on around her.

Simon's murderous imagination, honed over years of having her mysteries creep further and further to the dark side, gives us Tara's believable naiveté and frustrated persistence. She also paints in vivid color the sense of the really hot music as a group grows into its own legend, as well as the abrupt emergence of a star:

Chris Crack -- the name stuck, despite its affectation -- didn't enter so much as pounce. A glad rock throwback in a woman's eyelet blouse two sizes too small, he leapt onstage, grabbed the mic stand and swung it -- narrowly missing Jerry -- before opening his mouth for a caterwaul that had Nieve at the bar looking up, open-mouthed. Dropping from the falsetto scream into a rough baritone, he delivered the lyrics of the Aught Nine oldie -- "Beer for Fools" -- as if it were the gospel. And when he tore into a new song -- Tara, at least, had never heard it -- he pushed back into that falsetto, letting it fade away into something as soft as a lover's sigh,

By the end of the set, he had lost the shirt, and under its sheen of sweat, his pale torso glistened. He looked like what he was fated to become: a rock star. And all five people who heard him that night knew it.

Tara's search for the truth of both the rock 'n roll past and her present conflicts takes her down dark paths in rough company. And the answers turn out to have everything to do with how human we all are ... and how the backbeat can seize us and turn us into wild ones, even now.

The publisher is Severn House; the book's available for pre-order now, and since Severn House doesn't have huge first printings, a pre-order might be wise for collectors. Simon's mid-air twist into this sharp-clawed noir is well worth reading, and I hope is the first of more to come.

Oh, and if you don't know the source of the title ... try looking up "world enough and time" in your search bar (smile).

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Exploring Immigration Through Crime Fiction, MIGUEL'S GIFT, Bruce Kading

Bruce Kader's first novel, MIGUEL'S GIFT, takes place mostly in the 1980s -- a good way to distance the issue of illegal immigration and enforced deportation from today's difficult political climate. At the same time, this crime novel, told mostly from the point of view of INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents, offers a fascinating view of the issues that have become today's fuel for flame.

Joining the INS in Chicago in the late 1980s without having taken the "old boys" route through Border Patrol first, Nick Hayden has the rookie cards stacked against him. Idealistic and "overeducated" for the job, Hayden really wants to fit in anyway. His enthusiasm and remain edgy and uncertain.

Still, he's almost managed to fit in with the investigative teams, when the recruitment of an inside agent among the "wets" (illegal Latin American immigrants) and his own commitment to the man at risk derail his confidence in the work. But he's been harboring some odd doubts anyway -- some from a secret past of his own. They show up in his subconscious, long before he meets Miguel Chavez:

Hayden usually didn't remember his dreams and made little effort to do so. To him they were mere flights of the imagination, not to be taken seriously. But there was one dream he'd begun to have almost every week, and it disturbed him. It would always begin in a desert, the sun blazing through a cloudless sky -- the peaks of dry, craggy mountains looming hazily in the distance. Several figures in brown robes, like those of Franciscan monks, shuffled slowly along a sandy path. ... Nick, from a distance, would call out to get their attention, but they couldn't hear him.

Kading's own pre-novelist career as a federal special agent took him into the INS, the EPA, and the FBI (what a combination!).  So I was fascinated by the emotions and choices he provided for his fictional agents. Knowing some people who work on this side of today's enforcement issues also kept me glued to the pages, even when the writing was a bit too much "telling" instead of showing, and conversations felt overly predictable. I found the mild suspense of the novel was heightened by my curiosity over how Kading would bring about the climax and where his protagonist would end up -- as well as Miguel and his family, of course!

So I recommend this book strongly as an emotionally honest way to look at both the human and the criminal sides of immigration crime. It's not always a strong book, but it's a much-needed one, and I'm glad it came my way -- from Academy Chicago, an imprint of the Chicago Review Press.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.