Reviewed for Noir Journal: The Quest for Anna Klein

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In Thomas H. Cook's new historical espionage novel, The Quest for Anna Klein, a would-be American spy spends a lifetime tracking down the woman he longs for — and must avenge. I reviewed it for Noir Journal and repost it here.

Thomas Danforth has a lot to get off his chest, and he tells it to Paul Crane. As The Quest for Anna Klein begins, it’s 2001 in New York City — in the aftermath of 9/11. Crane, a young researcher, wants to take harsh vengeance on America’s enemies. The elderly Danforth can relate. He’s spent much of his ninety-plus years seeking his own brand of vengeance.

Danforth’s tale begins in 1939. He had traveled the world with his wealthy father and the young man now runs the family’s import business. He’s just the type to be recruited to provide cover for a fledgling American intelligence operation that will lead to the attempted assassination of a menacing tyrant named Adolf Hitler.

Danforth figures to stand squarely with the good guys, but the real world of espionage seems beyond him until he meets a secretive and beautiful young spy-in-training, Anna Klein. The mystery of Anna lures Danforth to break from his pampered life and join her on the dangerous mission within Germany to kill Hitler. It’s a thrilling time for Danforth, alone with the girl he believes will give him a more dangerous but fulfilling love and life. Then the attempt fails horribly and Danforth must flee, leaving Anna behind. She disappears, possibly into the dungeon of a Gestapo prison.

Danforth must find her. Throughout the war and beyond he embarks on a rabid and marathon quest that costs him nearly all. Anna might have been a double or even triple agent, he learns, and his pursuit takes him to postwar Europe and points East, a grim survey of the tragedies of twentieth-century Europe. In the Soviet Union he’s arrested and sent to a gulag for twelve years.

As more cruel questions confront Danforth, his search descends into an obsession with extracting vengeance at all costs. People have betrayed him. Could Anna have been at the heart of it all?

The best espionage and mystery novels are not about spies and plots and murders but about conflicted souls and the sorry truths they discover about the human condition. Quest offers fine glimpses of that, though the story may stall some readers looking for a fast-paced spy tale. The narrative framed with Crane creates many switches in time, the first third can be slow going as Danforth sets up his story, and it carries waves of foreboding and foreshadowing. 

Sticking with Danforth will reward the reader. The last third moves faster and approaches the quality of espionage masters Le Carré, Furst and McCarry, yet with a profound style all its own. Author Thomas H. Cook knows when it’s time to unleash the raw story. He gives you no choice but to follow Danforth as he hurtles on through dark times that threaten to make him far from a savior and just another hopeless victim.

This is Cook’s first go at an espionage novel. It seems a unique angle for a spy story to have Danforth plow onward like a dogged and self-appointed detective, but it’s not unfamiliar territory for Cook, who has had a long and successful career writing crime and mystery novels. Cook received an Edgar award for his 1996 novel The Chatham School Affair. Six of his novels have been nominated for awards, including Red Leaves in 2006.

The way the story’s told might split some opinions, but few can deny the novel’s thoughtful and compelling lesson about vengeance.

Review for Noir Journal: The Warsaw Anagrams

On occasion I'll be reviewing novels over at Mike Lipkin's Noir Journal blog. First up is The Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimler. In this hybrid of historical crime and literary fiction set in WWII Poland, an elderly Jew tries to find the murderer of his young nephew from within the horror that was the Warsaw Ghetto. It's a grim but compelling tale from a talented pro. 

Here's the review.

For Historical Fiction and History Fans

I was researching where readers of solid historical fiction go online and discovered a few interesting sites for all history geeks. 

War Through the Generations lists novels set during any wartime period that involves the US, though it's not restricted to US topics. The Losing Role is there, for example. Includes review links, recommended reads and reading challenges. 

Historical Novels lists fiction by broader periods, such as Medieval Europe or 20th Century, and breaks it down further into themes such as "The Crusades" or "Europe Between the Wars." Includes reviews, authors and other handy resources and is run by a woman right here in my Portland. 

Going beyond reading, two amazing if not mind-blowing sites reinterpret the past in compelling ways. 

Then & Now, a photo set on Flicker, superimposes old photos on photos of locales in present day. It's haunting stuff. Ever been traveling and found yourself imaging a certain locale in the (often darker) past? This one's for you. Set mostly in Amsterdam, but the artist's always working up something new. 

How to Be a Retronaut re-introduces our perceptions of past and future (and future in the past) through, well, any means possible. The motto runs: "If the past is a foreign country, this is your passport." That begins to explain it. Especially good stuff for a writer looking to recharge his take on an era. 

Also, slightly off subject, I did an interview at The Indie View, where I talk about The Losing Role and misinterpreted history, among other things. 

Noir And War Tell The Same Grim Tale

In Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels, German detective Gunther faces adversaries who are sick products of those in political power — men who also happen to be brutal fascists. In the later postwar novels, Gunther's mere existence within such a regime comes back to haunt him. The classic flawed fall guy, he too was a product. 

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Kirk Douglas in Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957)

In Stanley Kubrick's gritty masterpiece Paths of Glory (a favorite), Colonel Dax, a French officer in WWI, tries to stop the court martial of soldiers who mutinied rather than fight in another suicidal sortie. Dax doesn't solve a murder but he does discover, in starkest black-and-white, that the corrupt war Establishment works a scam of lies so big that a regular guy can never beat it. 

Both of these noirish tales were borne from war and the forces that need war to self-perpetuate. You could say modern war spawned noir. The monarchical proto-fascism that willed WWI sparked the new realism of the 20s, which shouted out that all we were being told was not blessed but bleak. WWII, with all its raw power unleashed, proved that bleakness worse than any could imagine. Sure, the postwar eras could look fun, pioneering and prosperous in popular culture, but there was always that sordid underbelly in which fermented the wretched truth that had been so deadly proved during war.  

How are the examples of Gunther and Dax, borne of war and fascism, much different from Chinatown, in which Jake Gittes finds that those most powerful are more perverse, corrupt, and controlling than any mob of smalltime hoods? To take this in another direction, John Le Carré's spare spy stories gave us Cold War controllers (much like a gumshoe's clients) who are only slightly cleaner than the legion of spies and masters on the enemy side. 

In the noir world, what else is war but a system rigged to serve not only the few power hungry but to dupe the many into believing in that very system? Many know it's rigged yet few can fight it. You can only survive. You might have to get a little dirty to survive. War, with all its blood-soaked, flag-draped, cynical and gilded champions; with all its grim consequences for the guy, however flawed, who's just trying to survive. This is the same world as in The Red Harvest and The Asphalt Jungle and right on through to LA Confidential. You have to play along even though you just know it's going to screw a guy. War is the ultimate expression of noir, whether we're talking about the thick of it or its grim aftermath. 

In war-tinged noir, the protagonists aren't bulls on the take, careerists looking to please or greedy industrialists but Nazis, Soviets, or worse yet, a main character's own officers, comrade soldiers or fellow travelers. The examples are so many — from The Third Man to Alan Furst's novels to those many hard-boiled types who returned from war only to find out the cards are stacked against them, whether it's a battle for a general's glory or a water grab to serve an incestuous LA baron. After the war the powerful are right back at it, only this time with more colorful flags, bigger mansions, heartier slogans. 

I try to discover the nexus of war and noir in my own work. In my new WWII novel The Losing Role a failed German actor, Max Kaspar, is forced to join a desperate secret mission in which he must impersonate an enemy American officer. So Max cooks up his own fanatical plan — he'll use his false identity to escape tyranny and war and flee to the America he'd once abandoned. Too bad Max is in far over his head. The Liberator, the sequel to The Losing Role, puts Max's German-American brother Harry in postwar Europe as the Allied Occupation and ensuing Cold War prove to be just another racket in the long line of rackets. Another novel, False Refuge, follows an American AWOL from the Iraq war who finds that the one haven he believed would give him a chance was the only thing worse — a new corrupt racket with even fewer scruples.

The noir label gets stretched beyond recognition sometimes, and the dark world in which noir belonged to war can certainly look like an artifact of the 20th Century. But just look at the headlines. If you still think it's dead and buried, you've been taking one hell of a nap.

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This also appeared in Noir Journal.