The Swiss Agent

 

The Swiss Agent, by Anna Pitoniak, is a true espionage/spy thriller. I haven’t read a good story like this in a long time. What’s different about the novel is that the two key figures are both women who have long careers with the CIA. The action in the book centers around the efforts by Bosnia to join NATO which is favored by the US and disfavored by Russia. It’s a story of great wealth and great bribes as both the superpowers are attempting to get Turkey to vote what is favorable to them. In the NATO charter, only one negative vote among all the NATO nations would be enough to kill the Bosnian effort. It’s clear that Turkey’s vote will go to the highest bidder, but trickery is required to get the money out of Russia at times when its funds are being blocked from transfer. Both women have struggled with being in a mostly male endeavor, with the cost to their personal lives as the result of being a spy, and with their ability to trust each other. Who is really an agent for the US and who is not? Who is playing a long game, and who is not? What do you do with a US President who is much more interested in doing what’s best for him as opposed to what might be best for his country.

This is a good and well written story. It certainly gets a strong recommendation from me.

 

The Sentence is Death

 The Sentence is Death is another NYTimes best seller. This is the second book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz six-book series. As previously described in my review of The Word is Murder, Author Anthony Horowitz fictionalizes himself as the biographer of private investigator Daniel Hawthorne. It was Hawthorne who approached Horowitz to write a book about him and his cases. Horowitz stated intent is to write in the mold of the Sherlock Holmes series in which Dr. Watson is Holmes partner who can never keep up with Holmes talent for solving crimes. Hawthorne in a Holmes-like fashion observes various details that others miss and then solves complicated crimes that baffles everyone else.

In this second novel, it’s a divorce lawyer, Richard Pryce, who has been killed, and the author presents a cast of characters who could have had a motive to kill the barrister. Once again, I listened to the audiobook format, and while the narrator, Rory Kinnear generally excels at performing the voices of so many different characters, his falsetto voice for Deputy Inspector Cara Grunshaw, is actually hysterical. Hawthorne made no secret of the fact that he thought she was an idiot, and the voice of Grunshaw fit his contempt for her.

Known as the “Blunt Razor” Pryce was famous for his absolute honesty even if it hurt the case for his own clients. In a nasty divorce case, one of his clients and the client’s wife were both hiding significant streams of income and assets from each other. Pryce had apparently discovered their lies and although the divorce matter had been settled, he seemed to be intent on reopening the matter, Both the husband and wife could have had a motive to kill him before he had made his revelations. There were other deaths like that of Gregory Taylor who apparently fell in front of a train, and the earlier death of Charles Richardson who died in a caving accident six years earlier. Pryce, Taylor, and Richardson had been college buddies.

There were multiple skillful misdirections by the author, so just like the first book and similar to the experiences of Watson and the fictionalized Horowitz, the real murderer was not revealed until the end of the book, and it was much to my surprise when author Horowitz revealed just who that was.

This second book was even more fun than the first. I’ve already started the third book, A Line to Kill, and I’ve downloaded the fourth, The Twist of a Knife. My advice, don’t you dare miss this series. It’s a delightful discovery for me.