A Shadow Intelligence, Harris - B

                           This is a very different and very good thriller featuring an MI6 agent, Elliot Kane. After a tricky and long Mideast deployment,  he is back in London when he receives an  encrypted video depicting himself and someone else in a hotel room somewhere. The video is fake, and the message is from a female colleague and MI6 training school classmate conveying that she's in trouble. Unlike almost every other read in the genre, the solutions and plot development rely on modern technology. Elliot is adept with malware, spyware and a few devious devices that can access any information on any device within hundreds of feet. He uses the dark web to ascertain that Joanna is in Kazakhstan and heads off to Astana without head office approval or even letting them know where he is going. Once there, he enters a bizarre world where Russian cyber-warriors are trying to bring down the country, while British petroleum interests fight a more traditional battle to maintain the status-quo. The country has become a battleground because of the discovery of a massive oil field just 50 miles from the Russian border. Plot, counterplot, and disinformation lead to a complex story, one with frightening detail. This is way above  the usual modern thriller.

Hammer To Fall, Lawton - B+

                                 This novel is set in the 60's, but like the previous one, harkens back to Berlin in the late 1940's, when Joe Holderness and a few other Brits, a Yank, a German and a few Russians were 'scheibers', running the black market. Joe and Kostya meet up in Finland, and then again in Prague. Most of the action is in Czechoslovakia during 1968. And once again, the final scene is set on a bridge crossing between the American sector and East Berlin late at night. There's always fog and limited lighting in Cold War meetings like this. An inadvertent shot rings out, and the ending may lead to the next book in the series, or this may be the end. 

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, Purnell - B

   Virginia Hall was born to a wealthy Maryland family in 1906. She rejected the role of women of that era and sought a life of adventure. She attended five colleges on both sides of the Atlantic. She was in Paris at twenty, and then on to Vienna, where she received a degree. She spoke five languages, and landed a clerical job in the American embassy in Warsaw. She was twenty-seven and stationed in Turkey when a hunting accident cost her her left leg below the knee. She resigned from the State Dept. on the eve of war and briefly drove an ambulance for the French when the Germans invaded. She then went to London and landed a position with the F (French) section of the SOE, and became their first female agent. The disabled thirty-five year old slipped into Vichy France through the porous Spanish border in August, 1941 undercover as a reporter. She was spectacularly successful setting up a burgeoning operation with a series of safe houses able to pass on downed RAF pilots to Spain. Because Vichy was technically neutral, she was able to continue her cover as a reporter and to use the American consular office in Lyon as a method of passing information to London. Into 1942, she continued to excel at building her organization, notwithstanding London's refusal to put her in charge of all SOE agents in France or provide her with military rank. She organized an important jailbreak of a dozen SOE men held by the Germans. As the year wound down, the Gestapo was looking for her, and with the Allied invasion of N. Africa, the Germans occupied Vichy. Virginia fled south and somehow, with a prosthetic leg, climbed over an 8,000 foot snow-capped peak in the Pyrenees, only to be arrested in Spain. The American embassy was able to obtain her release, and she flew to London from Lisbon. SOE rewarded her with an MBE designation. By May, she was in Madrid tasked to work on building safe routes for those escaping France. Bored in Spain, she returned to London where she was recruited by Wild Bill Donovan for the OSS. She was back in France a  few months before the invasion. Once again, she organized resistance activities and now as a radio-telephone operator was able to obtain supplies and disburse them to the Resistance. She was instrumental in significant demolition and sabotage activities in southwest France. Eisenhower had said the Resistance tied down a number of German divisions and materially shortened the war. She was awarded a Croix de Guerre and Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, she worked for the CIA until mandatory retirement in 1966. Never again afforded an opportunity in the field  because she was a disabled woman, she survived as an analyst, but never really flourished. She died at 82. Her accomplishments are now honored in the CIA Museum. Virginia Hall was clearly an extraordinary talent and this is a great story. The challenge with books about clandestine operations after all the witnesses are dead is that there is little detail about what actually happened.

The Unfortunate Englishman, Lawton - B

                                  For any Englishman writing a spy novel, the first, and only, relevant possible comparison is LeCarre. And truth be told, this author made me think that way, as have a reviewer or two. The first book in this series was set in Berlin mostly in the late 40's. In this one, the storyline revolves around the 1961 building of the Berlin Wall. Our MI-6 man, Joe Holderness, manages and pulls off a prisoner trade with the Soviets on the bridge to the American sector.  His efforts are rewarded because the Russian general he deals with used to be his partner in the late 40's blackmarket. The author is an experienced and successful writer. This book is a few years old and the 3rd in the series is out. Likely next read.

Camino Winds, Grisham - B +

                                  Few, if any, are better, and in this one, the author is at the top of his game. This is the second 'beach book' by Grisham set in a Florida beach town and featuring a bookseller, not a gaggle of trial lawyers. A murder in the midst of a hurricane leads to a magnificently laid out plot with the do-gooders on Camino Island, and ex-FBI, FBI, contract assassins, a whistle-blower, a massive fraud and the usual Grisham fun. A must read.

A Good Marriage, McCreight - B

                                 This is a very good page-turner set in modern day Park Slope in Brooklyn. All of the parents of the children at a prestigious private school are stressed about an email hack causing very real pain, but also looking forward to the annual neighborhood party where some spouse-swapping is alleged to go on 'upstairs'. Throw in a murder, some serious,  delusional recollecting, a bad apple or more, and you have a fun read.

The Coldest Warrior, Vidich- B

                                          This is a nicely done CIA thriller written by someone with the apparent knowledge of a former member of the second oldest profession, but with the deft touch of a screen writer, which is actually the author's day job. The novel is set in the mid-70's when the Agency was raked over the Congressional coals for its decades of misdeeds. The event being looked into was the 1953 defenestration of a CIA scientist from the 7th floor of a Washington hotel window. Many of those involved are still around, some highly-placed and not the least bit interested in divulging the truth. It was the height of the Cold War and that's all anyone needs to know. A quick fun read.

Voyage Of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission, Puleo-B +

   This is the history of America's, indeed the world's, first humanitarian mission. Never before had any nation, never mind the people of a nation, come to the aid of another. The mission was occasioned by the Irish famine that began in the summer of 1846, when the potato crop failed for the second year in a row. "Disaster was universal. Irish peasants - impoverished, weak, emaciated, sick, clad only in tattered rags-limped, stumbled, fell, and died by the thousands on country roads and in rain-filled ditches, in town squares, in snow covered bogs and on frozen hillsides, in dark windowless mud huts, in the slums and alleyways of cities......." Most in the Whig  government in London considered the victims as backward-looking slaves to their popish ways, unscientific and unable to fend for themselves. Indeed the assistant secretary at the Treasury for famine relief referred to the famine as a cure for the Irish's over-breeding. Ireland exported oats, wheat, cattle and barley to England. It is believed the exports alone, had they remained in Ireland, would have prevented a million deaths.                                                                                 When word of the famine reached America in early 1847, there was an immediate response across the country to organize assistance. Led by Sens. Clay and Webster, it encompassed all denominations and was truly bipartisan. A Boston merchant and sea captain suggested the US load up a warship with in-kind gifts to supplement the expected financial donations. Congress and President Polk assigned the USS Jamestown to Robert Bennet Forbes. That spring, thousands made an effort to leave Ireland. In the first six months of the year, 300,000 fled to Liverpool, many on their way to America. Often they were already ill from typhus or dysentery and died on the way across the Atlantic. The ships were called famine ships, and sometimes coffin ships, because by the time they arrived in America or Canada, almost all aboard had died.                                                                                                                              On March 28, 1847, the Jamestown sailed with a volunteer crew and 8,000 barrels of food. Every city, and virtually every community contributed, and 114 more ships followed the Jamestown to Ireland in 1847. Two weeks after leaving Boston, the Jamestown and Robert Bennet Forbes were met with unbridled enthusiasm and praise in Cork. Later that year, the half-hearted English attempts, soup kitchens and public works programs, were wound down because of concern over their costs and a fear of fostering Irish dependency. English antipathy was furthered by Irish demands for independence. American enthusiasm for assisting Ireland waned towards year end as both Boston and New York were literally overrun by poor and sick Irish immigrants, creating a backlash in their new cities.                                The Great Hunger took one million lives and sent a million-and-a-half overseas. It also permanently poisoned whatever  was left of Ireland's relationship with England. Irish hatred of England was most manifest a hundred years later when the Republic remained neutral in WWII. The almost million who left for America forever changed American politics and culture for the better, and led the way for waves of immigrants in the following 75 years. And America embarked on a policy of humanitarian generosity that survives in the 21st century.This book offers as fine a description of the famine and its consequences as any history or novel that I have ever seen. The definition of genocide is a 'deliberate' killing, so English indifference doesn't qualify. It should.

The Rabbit Hunter, Kepler - B+

                                  If you can handle off-beat Nordic darkness, this is a fabulous series. This is the sixth and Joona Linna is on the hunt for a spree killer. Unlike serial killers motivated by sex, this type of killer has different motivations and a plan. Here, the motivation is revenge, and once he starts, the bad guy is efficient, effective and on target. Another helluva good read.

House On Fire, Finder - B-

                                  Nick is a private intelligence agent and combat vet who loses a dear friend with PTSD to an Oxydone addiction. He is hired by an heir to the Kimball (think Sackler) Pharma fortune to out her dad, the CEO, who buried the trial reports showing the drug's hideous addictive tendencies. Plus, he'd like to avenge one of his dearest friends. Needless to say, with billions on the line, the obstacles are many, varied and vicious.