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.

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