A TRIO OF WARTIME ESPIONAGE TALES
Set in the Second World War and Cold War eras, these novels are page turners
When I’m not writing about craft beer my not- so- guilty pleasure is to dive into a thick spy novel, preferably one set in Europe during the Second World War or the Cold War decades that followed. To me, this lowtech era before the advent of computers and satellites and cellphones is when the cloakand-dagger genre works best because spies then were generally solitary figures who could trust no one and had to survive by their own wits and skills. Here are three recent spy novels by some of my favourite writers.
Kanon has written several spy novels, including The Good German, which is set in Berlin during the Second World War and was made into a 2006 film by Steven Soderbergh starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, and, most recently, Istanbul Passage, which is where I discovered his writing.
He returns to Berlin in this novel, but it’s now 1949, and the city is divided into sectors by the occupying powers: France, England, the United States and the Soviet Union.
Once allies during the war, the Soviets are now trying to force the western nations out of Berlin by blockading the city. The western response is the famous Berlin Airlift, during which more than 200,000 flights were made into Berlin over the course of one year, delivering food and fuel to the city’s beleaguered citizens. At its peak, planes were landing every 90 seconds, creating a constant drone that provides the backdrop to this novel.
Jewish writer Alex Meier grew up in Berlin, but escaped to the United States as the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. A foray into communism in his youth earns him a subpoena from the McCarthy witch-hunt trials, where his refusal to name names results in deportation.
The East German communists welcome their prodigal son back with open arms, but little do they know that he has actually been recruited by the CIA, which has promised to allow him to return to the U.S. if he provides intelligence.
But almost immediately upon his arrival, his situation worsens drastically when he kills a Russian agent in self-defence.
Not only that, but he learns that his true assignment is to spy on his own old friends, including Irene, his first and only true love, who is now attached to a Russian colonel.
In a well-made YouTube promotional video, Kanon says: “Occupied Berlin was a city made for spies.”
Indeed, until the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, travel between the east and the west was relatively easy.
Meier finds himself changing sides as often as he crosses between sectors in Berlin in order to protect himself and those he cares about. Leaving Berlin, however, is another matter entirely.
Kanon inserts some real-life characters alongside his fictional players, including the playwright Bertholt Brecht, who returned to East Berlin in 1949 and lived there until his death in 1958.
The author also includes a sly reference to a fictional Berliner, Bernie Gunther, the hero of 10 novels and counting by Philip Kerr, including one reviewed below.
Leaving Berlin is both a pageturning thriller and a thoughtprovoking study of a remarkable place and time in our history.
Fans of Philip Kerr’s nine Bernie Gunther novels rejoiced when this book came out because we all thought Kerr had ended the series when A Man Without Breath was published in 2013. But Bernie is back in The Lady From Zagreb and will apparently return next year in The Other Side of Silence.
If you haven’t encountered Gunther before, he’s a tough, honourable and outspoken Berlin homicide detective who drinks and smokes too much, has an eye for women that often leads to trouble, and a mouth that almost always does. He’s the quintessential hard-boiled, noir hero who won’t hesitate to use his fists or gun when the situation calls for it, but ultimately succeeds because he uses his brain. What makes him endearing to the reader is the moral compass that guides him through the horrific events caused by the Nazi regime.
The events of this book take place between the stories told in Kerr’s previous two novels. It’s 1942, the war is well underway, and Gunther is summoned by Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi minister for propaganda, who has a job for him. Goebbels is smitten by an actress named Dalia Dresner, and wants her to star in a new film, but she is refusing — both the film and his advances. Goebbels sends Gunther to help persuade her, but that strategy fails when Dalia and Bernie end up in bed themselves. Now, they have to keep their affair a secret from Goebbels, who would surely kill Bernie if he found out.
Dresner wants to reconnect with her estranged father, so Goebbels sends Gunther to occupied Yugoslavia to try to track him down. It turns out he was a one-time priest who is now a sadistic Ustaše (Croatian Resistance) colonel who runs a concentration camp for Serbs, and boasts of personally killing more than 1,300 prisoners in one day.
A later mission sends Gunther to Switzerland, where he’s captured by American spies, but manages to escape, and then becomes involved with a plot to send misinformation about Swiss military defences back to Hitler, who apparently considered invading Switzerland as late as 1944.
These two tangential storylines eventually come together in a satisfying ending. Along the way, Kerr provides his trademark combination of pulp fiction action set against realistically depicted historical events, with an assortment of moral dilemmas for the reader to think about along the way.
Olen Steinhauer started his writing career with a series of five well-crafted novels set in a fictional eastern European country (closely modelled after Romania under the Ceaușescu regime) running from 1948 through the days of the Cold War to the end of the Communist regime in 1989. He followed those up with a trilogy of contemporary spy thrillers featuring Milo Weaver, a member of a secret CIA black ops division known as “Tourists.” Since then, he’s written two stand-alone spy novels: The Cairo Affair and now All the Old Knives.
Apparently, Steinhauer was inspired to write this book after seeing a British TV production called The Song of Lunch by Christopher Reid, in which two old flames, played by Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, meet for lunch 15 years after the end of their affair. It made Steinhauer wonder if he could write an espionage tale that took place entirely at a dinner table.
The resulting book does include flashbacks, but the core of the story features two ex-lovers meeting for dinner at a fine restaurant.
Henry Pelham and Celia Favreau once worked together in the CIA’s Vienna station.
He’s still a CIA operative, but she left the game years ago. Now she lives in Carmel, Calif., and is married (to a Mitt Romney fundraiser no less!) with two kids.
Although the story begins with a playful exchange of emails lining up their dinner plans, it quickly becomes apparent that Pelham has an ulterior motive; he’s investigating an incident that occurred under their watch in Vienna in 2006 when a terrorist aircraft high-jacking ended with all the passengers and crew dying on the airport tarmac.
This is a fast-moving story that seems destined for the movie screen — indeed, a film to be directed by Neil Burger is apparently in the works.
All the Old Knives plays out with a driven intensity that makes it seem as if you can read it in one movie-length sitting, but you might prefer to savour it, like a good meal at a fine restaurant. Only, at the end of this meal, only one person is going to leave the table.
Joe Wiebe is the author of Craft Beer Revolution: The Insider’s Guide to B.C. Breweries (Douglas & McIntyre). He writes about books, sports, travel and beer for a wide variety of publications. Check out joewiebe.com.