Palm Beach Florida Weekly

THRILLS AND CHILLS




HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

The calendar may say late September, but it still feels midsummer standing-in-the-sun hot.
Here’s a look at some new and recently released thrillers that are sure to give you some thrills and chills no matter how high the heat index.

 

“The Bucharest Dossier,” by William Maz

($ 26.95, Oceanview Publishing) William Maz’s novel, “The Bucharest Dossier,” is like nesting dolls in literary form. The author describes his book as “a love story within a spy story within a historical novel, fictional, yet personal.” Maz was born in Bucharest, Romania, and lived there, emigrating as a child. His understanding of Romania and its people, the nuances of their language and interactions, permeate this book.

The plot revolves around Bill Hefflin, a CIA analyst who was a child in Romania before winding up in the US. He’s drawn back to his native country by his Russian KGB asset and winds up there during the 1989 Romanian Revolution when Ceausecu was overthrown.

This complicated puzzle of a thriller contains one of the sexiest chess scenes ever written, but some readers may not be happy that Maz feels the need to tie up every loose end and may find the last chapter unrealistic. Secret Intelligence Service in the early ’50s. There’s word of a Russian mole in the organization and then, to add to his anxiety, Harry’s estranged son goes missing in Tehran, a city on the brink of a coup.

 

 

“Yesterday’s Spy,” by Tom
Bradby
($27, Atlantic Monthly Press)
Harry Tower is a spy in the UK’sSecret Intelligence Service in the early ’50s. There’s word of a Russian mole in the organization and then, to add to his anxiety, Harry’s estranged son goes missing in Tehran, a city on the brink of a coup. Harry goes to Tehran to try to find him, pairing up with his son’s Iraniangirlfriend and using all his connections and spycraft knowledge. But he soon learn everything is not as it seems, and wonders if his own service has lured him there to kill him, or use him as a scapegoat. And he’s haunted by the ghosts of his own failed marriage and the death of his wife. British novelist/screenwriter/journalist Tom Bradby is the current anchor of the UK network ITV’s“News at Ten.” He has a crisp writing style and a journalist’s eye for describing the sights, sounds, and scents of Tehran in 1953 in this historic espionage thriller.
And the action never lets up. Harry goes to Tehran to try to find him, pairing up with his son’s Iranian girlfriend and using all his connections and spycraft knowledge. But he soon learns everything is not as it seems, and wonders if his own service has lured him there to kill him, or use him as a scapegoat. And he’s haunted by the ghosts of his own failed marriage and the death of his wife.

British novelist/screenwriter/ journalist Tom Bradby is the current anchor of the UK network ITV’s “News at Ten.” He has a crisp writing style and a journalist’s eye for describing the sights, sounds, and scents of Tehran in 1953 in this historic espionage thriller.

 

 

And the action never lets up.

“Two Nights in Lisbon,” by Chris Pavone

($28, MCD)
When Ariel Price wakes up in a Lisbon hotel, she finds her husband gone. There’s no note, and he’s not returning phone calls. She’s accompanying him on a business trip, and now he’s missing. To make matters worse, the local authorities and the embassy won’t take her seriously.
Then comes the ransom call: He’sbeen kidnapped. And she doesn’t have the money they’re demanding.

She begins to question how well she knows her husband; they’ve not been married long, and had a short courtship.

Stephen King said of this thriller, “There’s no such thing as a book you can’t put down, but this one comes close.”

This propulsive, action-packed novel full of twists and surprises is also a surprisingly sensitive commentary about the sexual abuse and exploitation of women.

Chris Pavone (“The Travelers,” “The Expats”) has written a nonstop ride of a novel.

“Bad Actors,” by Mick Herron

($27.95, Soho Crime)
A new novel by Mick Herron is always cause for celebration.“Bad Actors” is the most recent of his Slough House novels and, like its predecessors, presents the reader
with the dilemma of wanting to read slowly to savor every word and sentence while also wanting to speed ahead to find out what happens. His writing reads like a modern-day Dickens mixed with LeCarre.The spies at Slough House —called slow horses, which is the title of the first book in the series — are the worst of MI5’s demoted agents.
“To be assigned to Slough House,” writes Herron, “meant you’d committed some egregious error; had endangered lives, or caused embarrassment or invited the wrong sort of attention…

“…the role of a slow horse, as this troupe is known, is to embrace unfulfillment and boredom; to look back in disappointment, stare around in dismay, and understand that life is not an audition, except for the parts that are, and those are the parts they’ve failed. Because Slough House is the end of the pier, the fleapit to which Regent’s Park consigns failures, and these would-be stars of the British security service are living out the aftermath of their professional errors.”

 

 

This misfit group of failed spies are led by Jackson Lamb, a crude man. His crassness is an interesting juxtaposition with Herron’s lyrical descriptions.

“Bad Actors” deals with a Swiss political superforecaster who assists the Prime Minister in predicting how certain policies will be received. She goes missing, and the slow horses of Slough House get involved. Are the Russians behind it? The Brits themselves?

Apple TV+ has made a series out of Herron’s “Slow Horse” books, starring Gary Oldman. But it’s the books that have Herron’s marvelous writing, especially his evocative descriptions of people and place, and his humorous similes and metaphors.

 

 

You don’t have to read the previous books in the series to enjoy “Bad Actors,” but I’m betting that, like me, if you read one, you’ll want to go back and read the entire series from the beginning. ¦

 

 

One response to “THRILLS AND CHILLS”

  1. Pedro Martinez says:

    On 22 July 2022 Mick Herron’s sardonic spy thriller series called Slough House deservedly won him the Theakston Old Peculier crime novel of the year award. If Jackson Lamb had won it he’d have had a huge hangover this morning but let’s not dwell on what that might have sounded or smelt like. Both Mick Herron’s Slough House series and Bill Fairclough’s Burlington Files series of espionage thrillers were initially rejected by risk averse publishers who probably didn’t think espionage existed unless it was fictional and created by Ian Fleming or David Cornwell. It is therefore a genuine pleasure to see an anti-Bond anti-establishment novelist achieving immortality in Masham. Let’s hope Beyond Enkription, the first stand-alone fact based spy thriller in The Burlington Files series, follow in the Slow Horses’ hoof prints!

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