Intrigue and zip but little else

SAFE HOUSES Dan Fesperman Head of Zeus, £18.99

and managing their home is invisible as far as the market is concerned,” writes Ghodsee.

In short, Lisa receives no wages and contributes no funds towards her own social security in old age. She is left with a gaping black hole on her CV. Everything – food, clothing, access to medical care – is derived from her husband’s income and he can deny access to that at will.

There are countless other examples in this vein within its pages. In the chapter What to Expect When You’re Expecting Exploitation, Ghodsee confronts head-on the reality of motherhood and how the much-lauded mantra of “having it all” is impossible under capitalism.

“Socialists have long understood that creating equity between men and women despite their biological differences requires collective forms of support for child rearing,” she writes.

This is merely a snapshot of the complex socio-economic arguments that Ghodsee shines a light on but should hopefully lend credence to why her writing is so refreshing and timely, not

least with rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up women’s rights movements over the past year.

A series of mini biographies are peppered throughout, including of Elena Lagadinova, the youngest female partisan fighting against Bulgaria’s Nazi-allied monarchy during the Second World War, and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space who, in 1963, orbited the Earth 48 times on Vostok 6.

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism will stoke a fire in the belly of many readers.

Still, as Ghodsee herself acknowledges, not everyone will connect with her theories. “If you don’t give a whit about women’s lives because you’re a gynophobic right-wing internet troll,” she writes, “save your money and get back to your parents’ basement right now; this isn’t the book for you.”

THIS, as schoolmistresses of a certain age were wont to say, is not Dan Fesperman’s best work. This blunt appraisal is made for two reasons. First, it is better to deliver bad news quickly. Second, Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, has declared on the cover of Safe Houses that it is “one of the great espionage novels of our time”. My view does not concur with that of the estimable Mr Child. There is, of course, a chasm in our respective achievements in the field of thriller writing that may suggest Mr Child is the more trusty adviser. This reviewer merely asserts that what one lacks in terms of bestselling experience is compensated for in terms of sincerity.

Fesperman is a writer of some pedigree. He has won the John Creasey Dagger, the Ian Fleming Dagger and the Hammett award. Safe Houses never reaches anywhere near the heights of his best work, particularly The Prisoner of Guantanamo and The Small Boat of Great Sorrows.

The problems with Safe Houses start with the foundations, though there is promise before it falls apart. There is a dual narrative. Dirty dealings in the espionage world of Berlin in 1979 run parallel to the murder of a farmer and his wife in Maryland in 2014. It is a decent set-up. What links the two stories? Why was a woman murdered 25 years after seemingly extricating herself from an awful situation? The early scenes of both strands are powerful and affecting.

But the intrigue peters out quickly. The plot may be initially alluring but is shown to have so many holes it could serve as a string vest. This, of course, is not inevitably fatal to a novel. But to survive this flaw the characters must be strong and credible. Their motivations have to be comprehensible.

It is difficult in Safe Houses to grasp just why Helen, the central character in the Berlin narrative, should sacrifice all and so quickly and definitively. Her resourcefulness in escaping pursuers is not matched by an ability to form a strategy that would have addressed her concerns in a more satisfactory manner.

In the Maryland episodes, a daughter arrives in town after her parents are shot to death, allegedly by her brother. Her resilience and resurrection in the face of this trauma makes Lazarus look like a malingerer. She bounds into action as if she has lost a spare set of car keys rather than her parents.

The story then rattles along wellworn paths. There is a pace to Fesperman’s writing and it survives in Safe Houses but the route has all the stereotypical signposts. There is the spy agency still surviving when thought extinct, the seemingly innocent bystander who has an agenda, the villain for the ages. There is, of course, the final twist.

But it never quite convinces. The light characterisations and unconvincing dialogue make the lead characters insubstantial and the story increasingly improbable. Safe Houses sinks under these burdens and ends with the sort of “tying up all the ends” technique worthy of Murder She Wrote.

There is another disappointing aspect. Fesperman, once a journalist, has used his knowledge and experience to write novels of some originality. This is not one of them.

The espionage novel remains an excellent gateway to examine major themes. It has produced some of the most fascinating writing and in an accessible form. It still continues to provoke and illuminate with Mick Herron, Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst among contemporary authors who use the form to excellent effect.

Fesperman in his previous work has shown that he, too, realises that the spy novel can say something significant. He has previously applied a veneer of authenticity to originality and authenticity and has been rewarded with sales and the praise of his peers.

But Safe Houses is a misstep. Its undoubted energy cannot disguise a lack of purpose. The damning verdict is delivered uneasily because Fesperman is much better than this. It is also made in the humble realisation that this reviewer may be wrong and Lee Childs might be right. But he would need to send Jack Reacher round to persuade me.

Kristen R Ghodsee’s (left) book began as a piece in the New York Times. Its publication comes in the wake of the recent resurgence in women’s rights movements (above)