Sandstorm by Laurence Gough

First published in Canada in 1990; published digitally by Endeavour Press on November 28, 2016

Sandstorm takes place well before Arab Spring and the death of Mu’ammar al-Gadaffi, but it does not feel dated. The story is true to the time and place in which it is set and the atmosphere is convincing.

Charlie McPhee lives in a sketchy part of Cairo where the police rarely venture. His passport is expired. Two years earlier, the woman Charlie was planning to take to Cairo left him. Charlie decided to go on their planned vacation anyway, and couldn’t think of a reason to return.

Charlie has some skills, one of which is the ability to defeat security systems and break into safes. When a safecracker dies and needs to be replaced, Charlie is a convenient, albeit unwilling, replacement.

Charlie’s storyline soon intersects with that Jack Downey, who works for Richard Foster, the CIA’s chief of station in Cairo. Downey’s current assignment involves Gadaffi. To pursue his ends, Downey brings Hubie Sweets and Mungo Martin to Cairo from Columbia, where they were busy fulfilling a CIA contract by killing coca harvesters. Downey also has need of a security system specialist and Charlie fits the bill.

Downey is ruthless and manipulative, as he demonstrates when he recruits a young woman in London whose father was killed in Libya. Downey needs Jennifer Forsyth to get Gadaffi’s attention. I won’t reveal anything else about the plot, because its impact comes from various surprises that are revealed as it unfolds.

The story moves quickly, enlivened by occasional shootouts and fights and chases as Downey’s gang of rogues get into a number of scrapes. The action scenes are more-or-less credible, or at least no more improbable than those in most modern thrillers.

As B-list spy novels go, Sandstorm is a decent read. Readers who want their heroes to be heroic and for the good guys to prevail against all odds should look for other escapist avenues. Sandstorm serves up some of that, but none of the characters are icons of virtue. I appreciated that. The characters tend to be stereotypes but they are interesting stereotypes, unlike the stale Special Forces action-figure superheroes who dominate more recent thrillers. Sandstorm isn’t a first tier spy novel, but I would place it high on my list of second tier action-oriented novels with an espionage theme.

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