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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Red London by Alma Katsu

Published by ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons on March 14, 2023

Red London takes place after Putin, weakened by his fiasco in Ukraine, is replaced by Viktor Kosygin, another former KGB agent turned dictator. The richest Russian oligarch in London, Mikhail Rotenberg, has fallen into disfavor with Kosygin. Kosygin is demanding money from all the oligarchs but he seems to want everything Mikhail has. Mikhail survives when a Russian hit team invades his swanky London mansion, but the message has been sent.

In addition to Kosygin, the CIA, MI6, and parties unknown want to know where Mikhaiil's money is hidden. Lyndsay Duncan, a CIA agent starring in her second novel, is in London to run a Russian double agent (a subplot that drifts away without resolution). As long as she’s in London anyway, the CIA assigns Lyndsay to cozy up to Mikhail’s British wife Emily. Lyndsay finds it easy to infiltrate Emily’s circle of friends, as the circle is practically nonexistent. Apart from sending her to charity lunches that signal Mikhail’s standing among London’s elite, Mikhail shields his wife from the outside world. He only allows her to take their two kids on playdates where she can socialize with the judgmental wives of oligarchs. The British, including Emily’s parents, regard Russians as untrustworthy people who are ruled by “messily violent passions,” the antithesis of British Londoners who have eradicated passion from their very proper lives.

As gold diggers go, Emily is a reasonably sympathetic character. She comes from minor aristocracy. Maintaining the family estate is expensive and family wealth is dwindling. Emily knows that, unlike her siblings, she has average intelligence and no talent. If beauty is her only potential route to success, she might as well use it. Having caught Mikhail’s attention, she can’t find a practical reason to turn down a proposal from one of the world’s richest men. If he’s ruthless and a probable criminal in his business dealings, she doesn’t want to know about it. Emily might be a bit of a stereotype, but she is a stereotype with flesh. Sadly, she isn’t quite smart enough to understand that she will lose more than she will gain by bearing an oligarch’s children.

Lyndsay’s spy mission is complicated when she finds Emily keeping company with Dani Childs, a former CIA agent. Dani is working for a private company that hires former spooks. Dani also wants to get a handle on Mikhail’s wealth but she doesn’t know who hired the firm to obtain that information. Lyndsay also finds herself working with an MI6 agent who still carries a torch from the fling they had in Beirut. Those complications add spice to a modestly intriguing plot.

Lyndsay’s sympathy for Emily creates an interesting conflict between her duty to country (as her bosses see it) and her desire to help a woman who is stuck in a dangerous life. While Alma Katsu sprinkles in some gunfire as the predictable ending approaches, Red London is more a low-key spy/relationship novel than a thriller. Katsu makes token references to tradecraft but (apart from the occasional walkabout to expose tails) incorporates little into the story, depriving readers of the sense that they are reading about a field agent who has been trained at Langley rather than a bureaucrat who was told to do her best. Ultimately, the unchallenging plot and conventional ending of Red London are secondary to the relationships that give the novel its value.

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JUDAS 62 by Charles Cumming

First published in the UK in 2021; published by Mysterious Press on December 6, 2022

JUDAS 62 continues the story that Charles Cumming began in BOX 88. The book is the second in a series that features Lachlan Kite. It isn’t necessary to read the first to enjoy the second.

Kite is essentially running BOX 88, a clandestine organization that brings together spies from the US and Great Britain, a pairing that isn’t legally sanctioned and that is only known to a few key employees of the CIA and MI6. BOX 88 told the story of Kite’s first assignment. JUDAS 62 tells the story of his second mission. The details of Kite's current predicament are sandwiched around the story of his second attempt to please his spy masters. That mission left some loose ends that, decades later, Kite needs to tie up.

In the present, Kite learns that his name (or rather, the name of the alias he used in BOX 88) is on a Russian hit list (the Judas list). That revelation follows the assassination of a Russian defector who had been given a false identity and a job in Connecticut. Kite resolves to put an end to the assassinations.

The story then pauses as Kite remembers his second assignment for BOX 88. Kite was sent to Russia, where he posed as an English language instructor. Before leaving, he had a tiff with his girlfriend Martha, who got high and canoodled with another guy at a party. Martha eventually resurfaces to complicate Kite’s life.

Kite’s mission in Russia is to exfiltrate Yuri Aranov, a Russian scientist with expertise in biological and chemical weapons. Aranov is willing to defect to the country that offers him the best deal. The British want to make sure that country isn’t Iran or some other nation that might deploy the weapons that Aranov is capable of designing. Aranov has agreed to enroll in the English language class that Kite will teach so he can hear Kite’s pitch.

Kite is confident that one or more of his students works for the FSK and is taking the class to keep an eye on Aranov or Kite or both. Kite nevertheless makes no effort to resist seduction by his most beautiful student, Oksana Sharikova, in part because he’s still miffed at Martha and feels that if he is betraying her, she deserves it for betraying him. Betrayal, of course, if a primary theme in nearly every good spy novel. Oksana was with Aranov before she seduced Kite, but Aranov betrayed her for another woman. Kite worries that Aranov might view Kite’s relationship with Oksana as a betrayal. The reader will worry that Oksana is an FSK honeytrap who will betray Kite.

Illicit border crossings are a classic component of spy fiction. Cummings builds suspense as the reader wonders whether and how Kite and Aranov will make it out of Russia. Cummings tosses in enough complications to make those worries palpable. The story then shifts back to the present, where Kite decides that a Russian defector who is on the Judas list should be moved to Dubai and dangled as bait for Mikhail Gromik, a Russian intelligence officer Kite first encountered in BOX 88. The plot will imperil the double agent England has planted in the FSB (BOX 88’s source of information about the Judas list), creating additional suspense in a story that regularly places sympathetic characters in harm’s way.

An interesting side note in JUDAS 62 involves the difficulty that male spies have keeping it in their pants. Kite nearly messed up his assignment in BOX 88 because his attention was diverted by a hot young woman. Kite does the same thing in first half of JUDAS 62, when he was still a young and relatively new spy. Late in the novel, another spy breaks a woman’s heart because of his opportunistic approach to sex — if the opportunity is there, he seizes it. Cumming suggests that the thrill and danger of being a spy encourages men to seek inappropriate sexual release, but it could just be that they are being guys — guys who have the personalities and looks to succeed both at spying and seduction. In any event, while the sexual adventures of the characters are not presented in graphic detail, they add some spice (and extra drama) to the story. To his credit, Cumming recognizes the harm caused to sincere women who are used for the sexual convenience of men.

Another interesting side note is wrapped up in a speech that Kite gives at the end of the novel as he encourages another spy to remain with the organization. Intelligence agencies exist to collect information, Kite proclaims, but the problem with the world is not the absence of information but the flood of untrustworthy information. In Russia and China, state-controlled media tell residents what to believe. In the US, liars on social media tell Americans what to believe. And sadly, too many people believe the lies. “It’s a question of whether people are smart enough to realise that they’re being manipulated,” Kite says. The other problem is that people in power want to remain in power and will “do everything they can to remain in place.” Spreading misinformation helps them achieve that goal. Kite wants good people to “make it as difficult as possible for corrupt people and those who serve them to remain in power and manipulate the truth.” The point Kite makes is clearly not limited to spies.

I enjoyed BOX 88 and I enjoyed JUDAS 62 even more, in part because we get to see more of Kite as an older, more mature man. The plot in the new book is also more complex, particularly with regard to events in the present. Cumming has a long history of producing capable spy fiction. He’s doing some of his best work in the BOX 88 series.

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The Double Agent by William Christie

Published by Minotaur Books on November 15, 2022

The Double Agent is a spy thriller that begins in Teheran in 1943. Alexsi Smirnov, a Russian intelligence officer who infiltrated the German army, is warning Churchill of a plot to end his life. That story is told in A Single Spy.

Churchill’s bright idea is to reward Alexsi for saving his life by sending him back to Germany as a British agent. Having betrayed the Russians, Smirnov is certain that he won’t last long in Berlin. Alexsi’s attempt to escape from the British embassy and make his way out of Tehran is foiled, leading Alexsi to agree to spy for Britain, but on his own terms.

Alexsi wants to pose as a signals officer, preferably in Paris, an affable location from which he will be well positioned to escape when Germany loses the war. The British like the idea but send him to Italy, where he gamely takes over the signals operation at a German base. In addition to supervising soldiers who search for clandestine radios operated by partisans and spies, Alexsi is in charge of encoding and decoding messages to the local German command. He uses his position to send coded messages to British intelligence, passing on tidbits about German plans and troop positions in Italy.

The SS officer in charge of the base is happy to have someone of Alexsi’s coding skill and organizational talents. The officer decides to use Alexsi to spy on an Italian princess who is helping the partisans and who has the ear of the Pope. While Alexsi has fun in her bed, the new assignment adds another level of risk to his life as a spy. He dodges Russians, suspicious SS officers, angry Italians, and an unpredictable princess as the war in Europe comes to a close.

The Double Agent offers a nice mix of tradecraft and action. Alexsi doesn’t pretend to be James Bond, but he’s good with a knife. In most instances, he manages to avoid violence by outwitting his adversary. He has a moral code that, while flexible, prevents him from helping the SS commit atrocities against innocent Italians as reprisal for a partisan attack upon SS soldiers.

Alexsi doesn’t have much of a personality beyond his desire to stay alive and his refusal to participate in bloodbaths, but that’s all the personality he needs in a novel that is about survival rather than political idealism. Fans of A Single Spy will probably enjoy the sequel. The novels are similar in style. The second novel is sufficiently independent of the first that a reader will not miss much by reading The Double Agent without first reading A Single Spy.

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Alias Emma by Ava Glass

Published by ‎ Bantam on August 2, 2022

Russian assassins have been killing former Russian scientists who were once affiliated with Elena Primolov, a Russian nuclear physicist who was an asset of MI6. Charles Ripley was once Elena’s handler and perhaps her lover. Ripley spirited Elena and her family out of Russia just before the KGB was going to swoop down upon her. Years later, Ripley has a senior position in the Secret Intelligence Service. When he learns that Russians who were once close to Elena are being targeted, Ripley moves Elena to a secure location. Just how secure it might be is open to question. Another Russian lodged in a safe house was just killed, leading Ripley to suspect that a Russian mole is working in the SIS.

Ripley is training a young agent whose code name is Emma Makepeace. He gives her a meaningless assignment to get her out of the way, then tasks her with persuading Elena’s son Michael to stay with his protected mother. Michael is a pediatric oncologist in London and wants nothing to do with cloak-and-dagger shenanigans until he changes his mind after the second time Emma saves his life.

Ed Masterson wants Ripley’s job. Does he undermine Ripley and Emma because he is a double agent or is he merely ambitious? Ripley’s future is unclear by novel’s end, as is the identity of the mole, assuming one exists (and in spy fiction, one always exists).

Most of Emma’s adventure involves an extended chase scene. To get Michael to safety, Emma must tamp down her growing lust for the doctor while navigating their way through London as they are being pursued by Russian assassins. The tour of London’s back alleys and underground waterway (to avoid the city’s network of cameras that the Russians have somehow hijacked) adds atmosphere to a story that is competent but unremarkable.

Emma is a bit of a lightweight as fictional spies go, likeable enough but not memorable. The reader doesn’t spend enough time with other characters to learn anything about them, apart from one-dimensional Michael, who is a stereotype of a perfect man. He loves kids and saves them from cancer. What could be better? How sad for Emma that her duty is to Queen and Country rather than her naughty bits.

While the ending wraps up the story of Russian assassins, it leaves enough questions unanswered to make clear that Alias Emma is the first in a series that will feature Emma’s adventures in espionage. Spy novel fans won’t put Alias Emma on top of their stack of 2022 spy novels, but it is worth reading as an introduction to a series that might gain more depth and intrigue as it progresses.

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