THE ELIAS ENIGMA

A former contract assassin finds the spy game a lot harder than it looks.

Ambassador Claus Eichberg rots in a Tunisian prison, blaming “Caspian Anderson and his cockroach of a girlfriend” and praying for death, which is finally, brutally delivered by villainous Hwang Sung-jin. For his part, Caspian, formerly an assassin under the code name Elias, currently works for the Defense Clandestine Service and is in Kenya tailing Brazilian politician Dolores Araujo, who’s secretly a paid Chinese asset. Following Araujo through the slums of Nairobi, he’s gobsmacked to spot the aforementioned girlfriend, Liesel Bergmann, apparently similarly engaged. Like him, she’s an experienced operative with an impressive resume. Simmering under the turbulent action of Elias’ second adventure is the same question that propelled the first (The Elias Network, 2024): Can Caspian trust Liesel? His latest mission takes him to France and ultimately Tanzania, but not before he ricochets around Washington and environs and commiserates with his family in Portland, Maine. The droll joke is that his parents and his brother, Nelson, a physician for Doctors Without Borders, expect mild-mannered Caspian to settle down in Portland and take over his dad’s modest trucking business. The mission he’s pursuing instead involves Frank LaBelle, a rather naïve tech chief executive. Caspian finds himself periodically facing perilous predicaments and twists of allegiance. Cryptocurrency of course figures prominently, and Sung-jin reappears for an evil encore. Gervais deftly shuffles his large cast of characters like pieces on a chessboard, with well-timed “surprises” and many chapters ending in cliffhangers.

An adrenaline-fueled spy romp that almost makes its familiar tropes seem new.