THE CLOCKWORK SPY

CIA agent Helena Deane, compromised in a web of lies with Russian agents, flashes back during a D.C. interrogation about how the whole labyrinth ended in violence and death.

Helena Deane is in CIA counterintelligence, with deep knowledge of traitors to the state and how to hunt them. But her own role is problematic: As an Indian American woman whose brown skin made her family a target after 9/11, she’s disaffected toward both the government and her fieldwork in a fictional developing nation. She’s been blackmailed and has fed information to and done favors for a Russian operative. By most definitions, she herself is a traitor. Her department was tasked with rooting out a Vladimir Putin “mole” in the American intelligence network. Has Helena been accidentally assigned to discover herself? No, there must be another turncoat, even deeper undercover, who aims to remove Helena from the gameboard. At the outset, a gathering of suspects at a safe house leads to death and disarray among Helena’s team. In the aftermath, the CIA grills Helena and her husband, FBI agent David Deane—who, it so happens, has been investigating Helena as well. Daye, whose previous book was A Stellar Spy (2025), spins this cerebral espionage drama-thriller with the inquest-flashbacks presented in reverse-chronological order. This approach may drive readers to comb through the pages to find foreshadowing they might have missed. Daye is an admirer of John le Carré, who gets name-checked here, so her emphasis is far less on suspense/action and more on inner psychological turmoil and angsty relationships among a cast of international characters degraded by deceit (romantic as well as governmental) and doubt. The labyrinthine, sometimes long-winded, result requires readers to wade/trudge through the effects before they know the cause. Typical reverse-chron narratives hinge on the protagonists’ evolution from innocence and youthful idealism to cynicism and regret. When applied to the spy games here, however, guilt and moral failure hang over the material no matter how far back one goes, like original sin.

An intriguing, tangled espionage drama.