Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr

First published in the UK in 2011; published in the US in hardcover by Marian Wood/Putnam in 2012 and in paperback by Penguin in 2013

Noir is dark by definition, but Bernie Gunther is at his gloomiest in Prague Fatale. He's coping with the ugly events that marked him in earlier novels. It is 1941 and Bernie is back in Berlin. After harrowing experiences in Belorussia, feeling that he is merely "a blur" of the man he once was, Bernie entertains thoughts of suicide. When he looks at the mangled body of a man hit by a train, he sees himself. He is inspired to live only by the knowledge that so many Jews with so much less have soldiered on.

The mangled body is that of Geert Vranken, who came to Germany from Holland in search of employment. That his death was neither an accident nor suicide is clear from the multiple stab wounds that cover his torso. Bernie makes little progress in the death investigation until he saves a beautiful woman named Arianne Tauber from a mugging. Arianne eventually tells Bernie an intriguing story about an envelope she was hired to deliver that has now gone missing. The information causes Bernie to investigate the death of a Czech spy before he is summoned to Prague by General Heydrich, in whose pocket Bernie unwillingly resides. At that point Prague Fatale turns into a locked room murder mystery, giving Bernie a chance to exercise his considerable detective skills.

Because Prague Fatale is a murder mystery linked with a spy mystery, the plot is even more intricate than is common in the Bernie Gunther novels. The mystery's resolution isn't entirely unexpected but the setup is clever. A plot twist at the end is too often foreshadowed to be truly surprising, but it is nonetheless satisfying. A final twist seemed to be tacked on as an afterthought. The Nazi intolerance of (and hypocrisy toward) homosexuality is one of the novel's better themes, given that gay men are among the forgotten victims of Nazi tyranny.

By now, Bernie Gunther fans are so used to the character that his understandably bitter complaints about his life are taking on a broken record quality. He gives voice to his fears of what the Nazis are doing to him, and to Germany, so often that it becomes a numbing mantra. Prague Fatale would have been a tighter novel without the frequent repetition of Bernie's angst. Still, that's a relatively minor quibble. Bernie Gunther is who he is (as he often tells us), and that's what makes these novels so absorbing.

RECOMMENDED

Mission to Paris by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on June 12, 2012; released as a trade paperback on June 4, 2013

Jack Warner of Warner Brothers sends Fredric Stahl, an Austrian-born American actor, to Paris, where he will star in a French-made movie. The timing is unfortunate for Stahl. It's 1938 and Germany is engaged in political warfare, using a variety of resources to persuade the French that it would be futile to resist Hitler. Stahl, who has no love of swastikas, would prefer to avoid discussions of politics, but Germany wants to use him as an instrument of propaganda while America wants to use him ... not as a spy, exactly, but as a source of information. About halfway into the novel, Stahl's role changes.

Whether he's describing the contents of a cruise ship newsletter or the streets of Paris, Alan Furst's attention to detail is impressive. Stahl makes brief trips to Germany, Morocco, Hungary, and Romania, but it is Paris that comes alive. The characters are well-rounded, and if not exactly memorable, they all seem real.

Mission to Paris didn't hold me in the clutches of suspense as do Furst's best books, but it is a solid, entertaining novel. A love story that starts as a subplot but eventually takes center stage is more credible than most spy novel love stories. The novel's weakness is that Stahl never seems to be in real danger. Action scenes are subdued. Stahl's ability to waltz to a happy ending, untouched by the intrigue that surrounds him, makes the story less than gripping. Still, the intricacies of political warfare are fascinating, and Mission to Paris never failed to hold my interest.

RECOMMENDED

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews

Published by Scribner on June 4, 2013

"Two agents, both witting of the other, a single handler, the whole case directed by a mad scientist of a CI chief, two mole hunts -- and the added necessity of having to decide where to eat dinner." That sentence, appearing about three-quarters of the way into Red Sparrow, stands as a quick-and-dirty summary of an absorbing plot.

Red Sparrow begins with a traditional, but well executed, surveillance/chase scene. CIA agent Nathaniel Nash meets with a highly placed asset in Moscow, code named MARBLE, and manages to elude the FSB agents who stumble upon the meeting site. Vanya Egorov, First Deputy Director of the SVR, knows Nash met with someone, but doesn't know the traitor's identity. Nash has protected his asset but has blown his own cover.

After Nash is reassigned to Helsinki, the story shifts to Dominika Egorova, Vanya's niece, a determined woman who sees the colors that surround people. A detailed backstory explains how this oddly-wired woman became an SVR operative. It eventually becomes Dominika's mission (and Vanya's obsession) to trap Nash, to learn from him the identity of his Russian asset. Much of the initial fun in Red Sparrow derives from the chance to follow two intelligent intelligence officers as they try to recruit each other. The story eventually introduces a highly placed spy in the American government, the counterpart to MARBLE, but Nash and Dominika always remain the story's focus. About halfway through the novel, a conventional plot takes the sharp turn that separates jaw-dropping stories from those that are merely good.

A good spy novel needs moments of tension. Jason Matthews excels at those. He builds anticipation that instills serious teeth-gnashing as he places key characters in precarious positions. He makes palpable the anxiety endured by double agents who risk being unmasked. The last quarter of the novel is particularly intense. The plot thread concerning Dominika's relationship with Nash could have become trite (the stuff of trashy movies), but Matthews makes the emotions real while keeping the story fresh.

A good spy novel also needs good tradecraft, and the descriptions of tradecraft in Red Sparrow are exceptional. Spy novels often describe the schools in which the techniques of field work are taught, but I've never encountered such a thorough description of training in seduction, the clinical lessons imparted at Russia's Sparrow School. Although they detail the objectification and humiliation of women, the scenes are written with sensitivity and compassion.

The convincing portrayal of Dominika's roiling emotions, her evolving contempt for her masters, and Nash's evolution from a nakedly career-driven spy to a grounded human being make the lead characters in Red Sparrow memorable. Even minor characters are given full biographies. In fact, if Red Sparrow has a weakness, it is that so many characters are developed in so much depth that the novel is longer than it needs to be. Fortunately, it never drags, and that weakness disappears before the novel's second half.

Dominika's ability to see colored auras emanating from people is a little whacky for my taste, but that's the novel's only other misstep. Like real people, the characters spend some of their time eating. Their meals are described in mouth-watering prose. Rather incongruously, each chapter is followed by a recipe for some dish that is mentioned in the text. A chapter that ends with a dramatic death, for instance, jumps to a recipe for shrimp salad. The recipes are an odd addition to a spy novel, but people who have more culinary skill than I do might find them useful. In any event, they don't detract from one of the most impressive debut espionage novels I've encountered.

RECOMMENDED

The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry

Published by Mysterious Press on May 21, 2013

The Shanghai Factor is not Charles McCarry's best effort, but even a lesser McCarry novel is entertaining. This one is as much a mystery novel as a spy story, but it never quite develops the suspense and intrigue that fans of those genres crave.

A new agent, assigned as a sleeper in Shanghai, immediately breaks the rules by taking on a girlfriend he knows only as Mei. The unnamed agent assumes Mei is a spy but he likes the sex so he doesn't much care. Circumstances force the agent to leave China, but he soon returns with a new assignment: to set up Guoanbu operatives so they will be denounced as American spies. The operation appears to fizzle out, as does (to his great disappointment) his relationship with Mei. Back in New York, the encounters a Chinese operative who attempts to recruit him. Eventually it becomes difficult to know whether he can trust anyone, as each person who plays a significant role in his life might be a potential enemy, including the various women he beds at home and abroad. He becomes a pawn in a game played by two men "of mystery and power," one in Washington and one in China, all the while kept in the dark about the true nature of the game.

This is familiar ground for a spy novel, but the story is well told, often moving in unexpected directions. Most of it is credible, although some events near the novel's end seem both forced and implausible. McCarry maintains the novel's pace and the story is never dull. McCarry's observational talent is on full display, whether he's describing filth floating on the Yangtze or the curves of lover's body. His thoughts about the selective and uncertain nature of trust are not new to the genre, but they're well phrased. The same can be said of his observations about the power of coincidence and its relationship to fate.

For all its interest, however, the story is surprisingly light on suspense. The mystery's resolution is reasonably satisfying but not particularly surprising. The Shanghai Factor is the work of a supremely capable technician, but it lacks the "wow" factor that the best spy novels (and mysteries) produce. The agent is a well-defined character but not one I found myself caring much about. None of those complaints prevented me from enjoying the novel, but they prevent me from shelving it in the first tier of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on May 7, 2013 

Dead Lions has everything a good spy novel needs -- intrigue, strong characters, crafty tradecraft, byzantine plotting, sharp prose -- with the addition of a healthy dose of humor. The heroes (if you could call them that) are slow horses: Intelligence Service officers who aren't trusted with serious work, assigned to Slough House in the hope that they will retire or die of boredom.

Dickie Bow, a former spook with a drinking problem who went off the books after the Cold War ended, spots a Moscow hood in London and, acting on instinct, follows him. While riding a bus a couple of seats behind the hood, Bow dies, apparently of a heart attack. Jackson Lamb, in charge of Slough House, investigates Bow's death, while his employees are diligently avoiding productive work -- not that they're ever given productive work to do. The slow horses are an engaging group of misfits, and as the novel unfolds, we get to know them all. We even start to like them ... most of them, anyway.

The Cold War is over, but as Lamb investigates Bow's death, he begins to wonder whether there are Russian spies who didn't get the memo. Particularly the greatest spy of all, a legend who never existed -- unless he did. Lamb's minions at Slough House aren't particularly suited for field work, but Lamb decides to mount an operation that will get to the bottom of Bow's (presumed) murder and a (presumably) long-dormant scheme involving sleeper agents. Meanwhile, without Lamb's knowledge, two slow horses are borrowed from Slough House and tasked with creating a security plan for an upcoming meeting with a Russian industrialist. As you would expect, these plot threads eventually join into a single strand.

I've read any number of spy novels that are more somber than this one without being half as clever. The plot is both wild and wickedly smart. It's also more believable than the plots in many novels that are meant to be taken more seriously. Mick Herron writes in a tone of perfectly understated sarcasm that never fails to amuse. At the same time, he manages to tell a conventional spy story that is sometimes heart-warming and always intriguing. Toward the end, he delivers the excitement of a thriller. All of that, coupled with the cast of quirky characters, make me want to read the novel that introduced the slow horses.

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