A pretty good thriller in an informative historical setting.
A fictionalized account of the Cuban missile crisis from the Soviet perspective.
Fresh from a triumphant case involving a Soviet nuclear superbomb, Alexander Vasin of the Special Cases directorate of the KGB is attempting to catch a high-level spy. Oleg Morozov of the GRU is believed to be passing secrets to the Americans, but all Vasin’s efforts to uncover the traitor have so far yielded nothing. Vasin feels a particular urgency to succeed because his own boss, Gen. Orlov, is locked in mortal bureaucratic combat with Morozov’s boss, Gen. Serov. As Vasin pursues his quarry, he uncovers evidence that the Politburo has authorized the shipment and installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. In a separate plot development, a flotilla of four Soviet submarines, each one carrying a single nuclear torpedo in addition to its conventional torpedoes, is deployed toward Cuba. As Vasin uncovers more and more of this unsettling situation, he comes to believe that the American government needs to be informed, and he begins to try to use Morozov as a conduit. The discovery of the missiles in Cuba precipitates a diplomatic crisis, but cooler heads eventually prevail over the hawkish Soviet faction. The submarines, however, present another threat. Submerged and beyond communication, they do not require confirmatory orders to use their weapons, and when the U.S. “quarantine” corrals them, the possibility of a nuclear exchange looms. Matthews has done solid historical research—in many cases his characters bear the names of the actual participants—and the fictionalization is deft, but his need to represent all the moving parts detracts from the effect of the whole. Though the matter is momentous, less might have been more.
A pretty good thriller in an informative historical setting.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-385-54342-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Jones scores again with this highly entertaining, impeccably researched adventure.
In a trilogy finale, swashbuckling mercenaries the Essex Dogs, having gone their separate ways following the bloody siege of Calais, find their way back to each other to fight a new enemy.
With the imminent marriage of King Edward III’s daughter Princess Joan and Castilian regent Alfonso XI’s son Prince Pedro, an easing of tensions between England and its pirating rival is in reach. But all bets are off after Joan dies of the plague. Weary, battle-scarred ex-Dog Loveday FitzTalbot has hopes of settling down with his companion, Gilda, in the English town of Winchelsea, where he buys a tavern. But his life is thrown into turmoil after he turns for help in fixing the tavern’s leaky roof to the king’s sergeant-at-arms Richard Large, who wants to recruit him for the fight against Castilian pirates. Reluctant at first, Loveday is drawn in after the Castilians rampage through town, burning down his tavern and beating him to a pulp. Then the old warrior encounters his young archer, Romford, who also needs Large’s aid. Romford’s lavish earnings from the fighting in France have petered out through loans to his strapped mentor, Sir Thomas, who is still waiting for the ransom Edward promised him for kidnapping a French aristocrat, the Count of Eu. Romford plans to sneak the count out of Windsor and sell him back to the French. Compared to the widescreen action and ribald turns of Essex Dogs (2022) and Wolves of Winter (2023), this final volume takes a while to really get going. But it’s worth the wait to see the reunited Dogs, including their long-presumed dead comrade Scotsman, rediscover their passion for battle: “Once a man has been to war, it will always come and find him again.”
Jones scores again with this highly entertaining, impeccably researched adventure.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593653807
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A well-crafted spy novel examines the perils of espionage’s foundation in personal relationships.
The intriguing story of a young woman’s espionage career during World War II weaves in a critique of the British class system.
What sort of people got recruited to be spies by Britain’s famed MI5 intelligence agency during World War II? This absorbing historical novel makes clear they weren’t much like James Bond. Evelyn Varley is a restless young woman living in London in 1939, working for a cosmetics company and making no use at all of her Oxford degree in German, when she’s invited for a rather mysterious job interview. She rapidly goes from typing up reports to infiltrating a group of Nazi sympathizers—and discovering a disturbing personal connection. Starford takes an interesting tack with Evelyn’s background. The daughter of a clerk and a homemaker, she attended a posh boarding school as a scholarship girl, which meant she would either suffer bullies or remake herself in the images of the upper-class girls who harassed her. She chose the latter and did it so well she got into Oxford and became a sort of second daughter to the family of her best friend, Sally—a family that’s one of the wealthiest in England. When Evelyn goes to work for MI5, she discovers others who, like her, are outsiders in the rigid British class system but have found ways to assimilate by assuming an identity, an essential part of spycraft. As the war looms, the challenge for Evelyn is assimilating with people she finds abhorrent. Most of the novel is set in the years just before and after Britain’s entry into the war. Occasional chapters flash-forward to 1948, when Evelyn is trying to put her life back together after some unnamed catastrophe and tentatively falling in love. The book is rich with historical details, right down to clothing styles and furnishings. The plot sometimes slows amid those details, but most of the book is well paced. The novel’s depiction of Evelyn’s career is exciting, but it also suggests the human cost: No matter how skilled her performances, to those above her in the social hierarchy, she’s expendable.
A well-crafted spy novel examines the perils of espionage’s foundation in personal relationships.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-303788-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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