MISSION BUDAPEST
by Susan C. Turner
A British secret agent in pre–World War II Budapest investigates the murder of a colleague in Turner’s novel.
Harry Douglas is an agent of the British Foreign Service who’s been dispatched to Budapest to uncover information about the death of fellow agent Tennyson Neale. Neale was found stabbed and hanging near a bridge in a crime scene indicating local power players thought he knew too much (“Might as well have had a sign around his neck”). The year is 1938 and there are fears that Hitler is going to invade and wipe Czechoslovakia off the map; in Hungary, anti-Jewish laws have been passed, the socialist and fascist Arrow Cross party is fighting to gain power, and Hungary’s leader, Regent Miklós Horthy, supports the Nazi annexation of Austria to keep the Germans at bay. As for Douglas, he considered Neale to be a friend, and he and his partner, Mick MacLeod, carefully investigate his murder while posing as employees of a magazine. Neale was in possession of politically sensitive photos and memoranda; as Douglas and MacLeod piece together the specifics, the Hungarian secret police discover their true identities. Enter Magda Nagy, a beautiful and sophisticated actress, who becomes integral to their plan to get intelligence to London (Magda, who has Jewish ancestry, also needs to save herself). A cornucopia of information about Hungarian and European politics of the day is woven into the novel’s plot, and the happenings in Europe are so complicated that they can overshadow the relatively straightforward nature of this novel’s mystery. Still, Turner’s meticulously researched tale has all of the elements for a compelling spy novel: murmurs of war, dashing spies, late-night poker games, and sly but virtuous women with an air of mystery. Budapest works well as the staging ground for the novel, as the characters savor their fruit brandy and thermal baths while knowing that all around them, rights and freedoms (and even neighbors) are disappearing.
A sleek, urbane spy novel steeped in the atmosphere of pre-war Budapest.