Book Post - A Truckle Of 'Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy' Trivia

For no particularly good reason, a handful of things you probably didn't know (or even want to know) about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. Which is a book I've written. Don't know if I mentioned that before or not...

The wooden Estonian orthodox church is real
Dennis Wye meets Jaan Kallas outside a wooden church with an ageing congregation. It's real, down near the port in Tallinn (just across the road, in fact, from the Museum Of Soviet Uselessness) and rather beautiful. It's one of few surviving churches in Tallinn - Estonia seems quite proud of being the most secular country in Europe and most churches have been deconsecrated and are being used as concert halls or Irish pubs. Hence the ageing congregation. The music in these churches, by the way, is beautiful and forms a connection to the Syrian Urfalee church.

So's the ice road
And you genuinely are told not to wear a seat belt and to travel within the minimum and maximum speed limit for fear of creating resonance and cracking the ice.

Marwan Nimr is back
He was inspired by a box of fruit. There's a company that airfreights fruit out of Lebanon called 'Marwan' and its logo is a little dakota-like aeroplane whizzing through the air. And so Marwan Nimr was born. He makes a cameo in Shemlan - having survived Beirut - and he's not best pleased with our Gerald.

Talking of cameos...
Lamiable extra brut champagne makes a brief appearance, following its excellent debut in Beirut. It's actually hard to make great extra brut champagne (with little or no added sugar, or 'dosage', it's easy to make sour extra brut, hard to make flinty, dry but rounded extra brut) The family that produces this exquisite single grower grand cru champagne appear to have forgiven me for using their delicious product to kill a chap in Beirut. I know they've read it because their UK importer sent them the relevant passage. Snitch.

The Puss In Boots
Marcelle's rather outré establishment in Monot, Le Chat Botté, is actually named after a Belgian hotel I stayed in as a kid. It just seemed like a good name and I've always liked that Marcelle insists on using its French name rather than the English version. How very Lebanese, darling!

Lance Browning
The nature of Lance Browning's fate and the fact he works for a certain bank are by no means intended to be some sort of revenge on my bank and certainly not written with ferocious relish. I can state that categorically.

The baddies are really bad...
The Ühiskassa, the umbrella organisation of the Estonian mafia is real, although apparently less active these days than in its heyday before Estonia's accession to the European Union.

The goodies are hardly better - and no, the whole CIA scheme in the book is by no means far fetched
In fact, the precise scheme they're up to in Shemlan is documented as having been seriously evaluated as an operation by the CIA. There are many recorded instances of US intelligence having become involved in the international arms and drugs trades, including the ill-fated Iran contra scandal, as well as money laundering drug related funds. So now you know...

You can buy the book here. 

There's also more stuff about the book and the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies there, too!

Emirates ID To Function As Bank Card? Oh Horrors...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's no end to the things you can do with a smart card and the Emirates ID card is no exception. Gulf News reports today, in all seriosity, on a banking executive from Noor Bank who has commented on the announcement, made apparently on December 31st, that the Emirates ID card will be integrated with bank cards to create a single, seamless customer service experience paradigm excellence luminance entity.

Given my UAE bank has over the years managed to screw up every single service it offers, from failing to make transfers through to issuing cards, from honouring cheques through to failing to call me before blocking Visa transactions and so on through a litany of incompetence and befuddling idiocy, the very idea of integrating such a bunch of hooning nitwits with my biometric identity chills me to the marrow.

And while it may sound attractive to pool a range of services into a single smart card, the practicality of it all is that the more things you load onto a single transactional device, the more shocking the consequence of that device's failure are. It's a little like passwords - we're constantly told by security experts that we shouldn't have a single password for every service we use. Similarly, a single card with multiple functions is inherently less secure and more prone to visits from Mr Cockup.

Added to that, the ID card now requires renewal every two years, which would mean that you forsake access to your bank account for the period between expiry and renewal. And - as we all full well know - when you for some reason fall off the rails and become an exception to the system for some reason, you could well find yourself bereft not only of identity but funds as well.

This whole integration thing comes hot on the heels of the recent ATM outage in the UAE, where customers from at least two banks found themselves unable to withdraw money from ATMs but - in many cases - found their accounts debited by the amount of the failed withdrawals.

The executive quoted by GN apparently "Admitted that there could be certain issues". You can sing that, buddy...

UAE Anti-Smoking Law. Genius Or Just A Fag?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE is to implement a smoking law banning tobacco advertisements, smoking in schools, universities and places of worship and smoking in cars with kids of less than 12 years of age. Oh, and making under-age smoking illegal with a fine of up to Dhs10,000.

The National reports on the story today. The implementation of the Federal law is to take place on January 21st. Strangely, the law itself dates back to 2009 - but crafting regulations, by-laws and compliance with many shades of red tape have delayed its implementation.

There's no tax on cigarettes in the UAE, so a pack costs less than £1. Something like 40% of teens in the UAE smoke.

There's no effective ban on smoking in public places (offices, restaurants and other outlets), despite early talk of the by-laws to the Federal smoking law including such provisions. The Ministry of Health has, according to The National's piece, just 'prepared a draft resolution to ban smoking in the ministry’s hospitals, primary health centres and specialised treatment centres.'

So despite that early sabre-rattling, there's to be no UAE blanket ban on smoking in public. It would appear that whatever the intentions of the law originally were, the process of negotiating its implementation have drawn many of its teeth. Does the implementation go far enough? Well, if you believe smoking is a bad thing, no it doesn't.

I speak as someone who used to smoke for England. I chugged my way through about sixty a day until finally coming to the realisation that I was manipulating the people around me so that I could be sure of finding myself in a situation where I could smoke. I didn't like that in myself. But I did promise myself I'd never become one of those rabidly anti-smoking ex-smokers.

It's a promise I'm finding increasingly hard to keep, to be honest with you. I gave up the fags back in 2001 and find it harder each day to remember why I ever thought what I was doing to myself was anything other than insane and suicidal.

Which is why I'm mildly horrified to realise I don't think the implementation of the law on 21st January is enough. A UK/Ireland style blanket ban of smoking in all public places is what is required, not a range of halfway house resolutions.

If the me from before 2001 could hear me now, he'd kick my arse...

Book Post: Shemlan, Newgale, Pembrokeshire And Floods

Jason Hartmoor has been alive a little over an hour. He has recovered from his recurring nightmare and turned the damp side of his pillow to face the mattress. He luxuriates in the bright light streaming through the window overlooking the sea. It takes up most of the length of the room.

The bed sheets are white and crisp. Every opening of the eyes is a bonus, a thrill of pleasure. Sometimes he tries to stave off sleep, lying and fighting exhaustion until the early hours. It is becoming increasingly hard to push back the darkness. These days he’s lucky to hold out beyond midnight.

Throwing the lightweight duvet aside, he pauses for breath before sliding himself into a sitting position, looking out over Newgale’s glorious sandy mile, the breakers cascading. The dots of shivering early surfers bob in the glistening waves.

The pain starts to creep back, like a slinking dog.

He stands by the window, gazing out over the hazy beach, the fine misty spray thrown up by the incoming tide. His face in the morning light is lined and wan, pain etched into his still-handsome features, a face that would seem haughty but for the humour in the blue eyes nestled in the bruised-looking shadows. His hair is white, his forehead prominent and his nose aquiline. He draws himself up unconsciously; the slight puff of his chest brings a twinge of discomfort.
From Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy

What's the connection between the Lebanese mountain village of Shemlan and the Pembrokeshire coast? Absolutely none, unless you count me. Retired diplomat Jason Hartmoor was always going to have holed up either in Newgale or Pendine, it was touch and go which until I actually started writing the words above. I just wanted a long beach.

I spent many idyllic childhood holidays just around the corner from Newgale, the family stayed in the village of Pen Y Cwm (Welsh for 'top of the valley') and we'd often walk over the headlands to the village shop. When the tide is low you can walk from the beach at the end of the valley to Newgale, a mile and more of golden strand stretching out before you and a huge sea wall of slithering grey sea-worn stones protecting the pub and campsite that, apart from a handful of houses scattered on the hillside, make up Newgale itself.

The recent bad weather in the UK saw the Pembrokeshire coast taking something of a battering and Newgale was no exception: for the first time in living memory, that huge mound of stones was breached by the tide and wind-blown sea, flooding the campsite and pub beyond.

My parents never lost their love of this majestic coast and - arguably too late in life - chose to move there in their retirement. It was more my father's choice, he had a hankering to live by the sea. They ended up inland, a little down the road from Newgale and so we travel there frequently enough. The beach remains a favourite walk and yes, even in the winter months that mercilessly cold grey sea is dotted with the figures of surfers. I've always thought them quite, quite mad.

Anyway, as you travel uphill out of Newgale towards Pen Y Cym and Solva there's a bungalow with blue windows. Stand below it and look out across the vast expanse of shining sand at low tide and you'll see the view Jason took in on the day he pushed his x-rays into the kitchen dustbin and trundled his wheelie bag out to the taxi on his way to Beirut and his date with destiny...

Films On The Fly

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I only ever watch films when I fly Emirates. This is for two simple reasons. Firstly I'm there anyway so I can't complain at wasting 90 minutes of my life and secondly it's free, so I haven't shelled out 35 hard earned Dirhams (or whatever it is) on sitting around and consuming over an hour's worth of vapid guff dressed up as something I really, really need to watch. Because nine times out of ten, it's nothing more than vapid guff wot's on offer.

Rarely have I found myself driven to such a state of fury by Hollywood as I was this time around - that the crash came on the back of finding - to my consternation - two enjoyable films just made it worse and the impact all the more shocking.

I watched 'Jobs' on the way out, which was interesting. Ashton Kutcher does an impressive Young Jobs and somehow manages to make the transition to Ill Jobs believable. There are just a couple of 'Look, see I can do Steve Jobs' trademark silly walk' scenes too many - okay, you can do the walk. We get it. I've always had the feeling that Jobs was an obsessive egomaniac with a sizeable Jobs fixation and the film certainly reflects that side of the man's nature whilst doing a neat balancing act that avoids alienating the many million iZombies out there who would all too readily cry foul if their icon and obsession were handled too roughly. But generally the film's an engaging and entertaining portrait of Our Steve from his college dropout days through to the internal reveal of the iPod - the film's opening scene.

On the way back I watched 'Rush' which I enjoyed thoroughly. The film tells the story of James Hunt and Niki Lauder's rivalry and for some reason reminded me strongly of Frost vs Nixon (I found out just now this wasn't coincidental - both films were directed by a bloke called Ron Howard). It really is a period piece, all sideburns and flared collars, both title role actors do a fabulous job of portraying their characters and this is by no means a film you have to be a petrol-head to enjoy. It's truly great stuff, gripping and intense, stylish and rarely less than dramatic.

And then I decided to watch Matt Damon in Elysium. Don't ask me why, looking back on it I can't fathom what on earth I thought I was doing. But I did it. And, perhaps more worryingly, I stuck with it rather than being a sensible boy and finishing the Top Gear Marathon I had started on the outbound flight.

It's possibly the worst film I have ever watched. It actually made me angry that someone, somewhere not only picked up the script but made the awful thing. I'm still fuming.

Everyone on earth is poor and sick and we've broken the planet. The rich elite have escaped to an paradisaical toroidal orbital called Elysium where everyone has garden parties and every house has a machine that fixes all known illness. Some of the Elysium people come back to earth in order to run companies that make profits by exploiting the labour of the ill earth people. Some of the earth people try to get up to Elysium but their space jalopies are blown up by secret agents on earth working for Elysium, in particular a nasty South African called (I can't remember) who has lots of wizzbangs and guns and things.

Matt Damon plays (I can't remember), a former criminal gone straight. Everyone except Matt Damon is Hispanic. He works in a factory doing something a great deal more interesting and diverse than most factory workers. We never get to find out quite what, but it involves screwing things and assembling what look like droids. Matt gets fried in a radiation oven when he tries to unblock the door and is sacked. Quite why you would want to bathe droid carcases in a radiation oven is never really resolved. It is explained to him he has received a massive dose of radiation and has suffered massive organ failure and will die massively in five days. This makes him puke up. Massively. Having just had winter vomiting bug, I find myself in sympathy with Matt, although couldn't help questioning quite how extensive organ failure and imminently terminal radiation poisoning makes you puke up but leaves you still able to stagger around.

Matt goes to see (I can't remember), the local hood to offer his services in return for a black market ticket to Elysium where they can cure his terminal illness. The hood laughs at this. What could Matt Damon possibly offer him that would make it worth a ticket on a shuttle to Elysium? Oh hang on, he just thought of something! Phew!

Matt is now too sick to walk and so is fitted with a mechanical exo-skeleton by some black market surgeons who are surprised to find him alive the next morning after they have screwed the whole thing into his bones. Alive he might be, but he's a mess. Strangely, at no point in the film do we get the impression that Matt is a dying man propped up by an exo-skeleton, he's far too dynamic and just damn heroic for all that. He does, however, mop his brow and stagger occasionally - to signify existentially threatening illness, we presume.

This provides possibly the only interesting aspect to this film - the brand collision between Matt Damon and his role. He's supposed to play a man dying of acute radiation poisoning, but he's Matt Damon, man of action! How can he possibly play a man weakened by illness? Simple! Be Matt Damon with an exo-skeleton!

Matt and a gang of hoods set out on a heist to capture the mind-state of a top Elysium official who has come to earth to run a factory. This is his price onto a shuttle, it seems. Oh, lookie! It's the same official who ran Matt's factory where he got sick. Luckily, Elysium Man (I don't remember his name) is involved in a plot to launch a coup in Elysium hatched by the wicked Minister for Defence, who is a nasty lady in a natty suit. So when Matt downloads the chap's mind state, he receives the code to reboot Elysium's servers.

For some reason, Elysium's server farm requires green screen pages of code overlaid with a knifey-looking graphical logo thing that says 'DANGER THIS IS THE SERVER REBOOT CODE WE DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE' or something like that. I can't quite remember. While we're on the subject, writing a reference to 'the cloud' in the script doesn't make your film sound technical and futuristic, it makes you sound stupid. And if we ever (and I doubt this very much) evolve to the stage where we can build toroidal earth orbiting paradises, I don't think we'll still be using server farms, let alone keyboard based computers. Do please feel free to laugh at me from your toroidal earth orbiting paradise when you are searching the earth archives on your laptop PC in a few hundred years' time and find this.

This code is now in Matt's head, so the South African bloke wants to capture him. There's a hot looking Hispanic doctor chick Matt knew as a child and she has a daughter with terminal leukemia who also wants to go to Elysium. The kid is cute. Who'd have known?

The South African baddie captures the hot Hispanic chick, whose name I don't remember, and her cute kid. He also captures Matt and takes them all to Elysium. The hood and his henchmen also go to Elysium because they've figured if Matt has the code to reboot Elysium's servers in his head then they have a chance of resetting the place and making it accept all humanity as members of the The Elysium Club. This will cure everyone, heal earth and make everything right again, apparently.

There are a lot of fights. The hood uses his laptop computer to break all the door locks. Matt kills the South African guy. The kid gets to an Elysium machine and is cured. Matt is plugged into the servers and they reboot. He dies. All of humanity is accepted into Elysium. Yay.

It's the biggest pile of wombat doo I have ever seen in my life. The write-up in the ICE brochure thingy said it touched on important issues, but if there are important issues in here I certainly didn't find them. Unless you're talking about the blindingly obvious and egregiously simplified haves and have-nots thing going down amongst the witless action and lamentable, drooling dialogue.

I had to watch three hours of Top Gear to calm down. I'm still not right, even now. Look on the bright side - I've taken a 109 minute one for the team so you don't have to.

Book Post - Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy On Da Radio

From 11am tomorrow, Dubai Eye Radio's regular Saturday book programme, Talking of Books, will be featuring Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy in its 'Book Champion' slot, in which one of the team proposes a book they think the world should go out and buy and read right now.

I mean, you can only agree with such exquisite taste, can't you?

I'll be joining them on the 'phone at around 11.40am to talk about the book and answer questions. Coming on the back of a 'red eye' flight home, the slot may well feature a sleep deprived maniac babbling absolute rubbish about books, spies and the like and so should at least be entertaining from that point of view.

If you haven't got around to buying your copy yet, here's a handy link to the various online stores who'll sell you an ebook or printed copy.

It'll be my first real public grilling about the book (the Twitter Book Club meeting on the 18th will be a chance for a real eyeball to eyeball encounter with readers) by people wot has read it, so I'm looking forward to finding out what they thought and what questions it left 'em with. I bet we'll be talking about MECAS and George Blake, Kim Philby and the like but you never know. There's plenty else to chat about, from the Lebanese Civil War through Aleppo's destroyed souk to driving across the frozen Baltic.

If you're not UAE based, you can catch the interview streaming online (about 7am onwards UK time, about 9am Beirut time) on this here handy link. Alternatively, you can use this information to neatly avoid the encounter.

What larks!

Norovirus, or Winter Vomiting Disease. Oh, Yummy!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Warning. This post contains zombie vampire-like scenes.

Sarah's class was depleted by a nasty bug towards the end of term and it seems to be pretty much universal - The Niece From Heaven went down suddenly and spectacularly, just managing to get word out in time for her parents to be rushing her into the bathroom as the powerful primary reaction to Norovirus struck - you don't want to know more than that, believe me.

There are few things more tragic than a very ill four year old. Running a nasty fever and feeling woebegone, she was nevertheless stoic to a tee. We got a sign of things to come when her mum went down a couple of days later, just as she was recovering.

And then it was my turn. I woke up feeling God Awful, immediately doing an audit of the previous night's revels and discounting the results of stepping far and wide. It couldn't be the dreaded 'Winter Vomiting Bug'. No way. I hate being sick. I haven't thrown up since I was a student. It feels like 'flu or the after effects of a typhus shot. I lay feeling achey, crampy and generally suffering from a compelling lassitude. The impulse came from absolutely nowhere. One minute I was convincing myself I could get through this without fwowing up*, the next I was in the grip of powerful and inescapably certain impulses. I just made it to the bathroom myself.

You know when you puke so hard it goes through your nose? The upper part of your body just opens up and the lower part tenses. It's like you're a tube of particularly bilious toothpaste and someone's just stamped on you. I swear having your head down a toilet bowl is the most pleasant aspect of the whole experience. Streaming eyes, burning throat and sobbing, dry retches to follow with a side of stench, please.

And I was one of the luckier ones - I only did one trip to the lavabo - other sufferers endure multiple occurrences and even double-ended symptoms. Well, hang on - what did you think a post titled Winter Vomiting Disease was going to read like? A walk on the beach? Stop moaning.

Then the fever sets in, I have never felt cold like it. My fingers were seizing up they were so cold. Blankets and water bottles, a stoked up fire and constant glasses of water started to alleviate the symptoms. Then you're hot, burning up and yet others swear you're clammy.

It's over after a day and night, leaving me doddery and feeling utterly wasted.

Believe me, you don't want to get this sucker. A little Googling reveals the virus survives quite happily on hard surfaces for a week and more, in infected water for six months. It's spread through sneezing and other more icky exchanges of bodily output and is particularly prevalent in hospitals, where they have a devil of a job trying to get rid of it. It closes whole wards. And it's highly contagious. It's not dangerous, just very, very unpleasant.

Worryingly, I found myself using the experience to map to the description I'd put together of Jason Hartmoor getting sick in Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy and judged my memories good. What a time to be thinking of books...

*The entertainingly vicious Dorothy Parker reviewed, in her 'Constant Reader' book review column, AA Milne's House At Pooh Corner with the remarkable conclusion, 'Tonstant Weeder Fwowed Up.'

Book Post: The Displaced Nation

It's quite a neat title for an expat blog, isn't it? The Displaced Nation is a blog that ties together people from all over the world who have decided to live, well, all over the world. It shares the experiences and tales of people who have decided to leave the comfort of hearth and home and live somewhere alien, foreign and different.

I can imagine nothing more fun than alien, foreign and different.

Anyway, DN has been a great supporter of my book publishing endeavours over the years (They're +Displaced Nation or @displacednation) and I love 'em for it - which is why now that we have three books in the Levant Cycle, officially a 'trilogy' since I gave in to popular opinion, it falls to the Displaced Nation team to reveal details of the fantastic, limited time offer that's about to take place globally and in glorious Technicolour.

I'm going to put Olives - A Violent Romance, Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy up for sale at $0.99 each for a couple of days before Christmas. This is clearly an ebook only kind of deal, so if you're wedded to print there's no bonanza - but if you've got a Kindle, Sony, Kobo, Nook or iPad and want to get three decent thrillers based in the mystical and majestic Middle East for under $3, this is your perfect opportunity.

For accountants and others inclined to autism, that's about $0.00001 a word.

The kicker is you have to subscribe to the Displaced Despatch to find out when the promotion is taking place. It's linked here for your listening pleasure. The Despatch is a weekly summary of book reviews, recipes and posts from the DN blog and actually a decent enough sprinkling of international fun and games in its own right.

As you're in the mood to go signing up to newsletters, you can also sign up to mine (link on the right hand side there - it's a bit more random than weekly. Let's call it 'occasional'...) which gets you a copy of Olives - A Violent Romance for FREE! So then you could get your jammy paws on a whole trilogy for just $1.98!

Oh, the BARGAINS to be had around here! It's enough to make your head spin!

The Passing Of 'Lawrence Of Arabia'

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He was 'Lawrence of Arabia' to so many people, the brilliant Peter O'Toole made the role his own in David Lean's stunning epic. Of course you'll know by now he is dead - here's Alex Ritman's excellent obituary in today's The National.

I've long been a big fan of the film. It's bunkum, of course. Lawrence didn't say lots of the things the film has him say, including that glorious, "small people, silly people" line. And the whole thing with the two boys was outrageous. But O'Toole neatly nailed the enigmatic persona, the aloof yet ambitious 'Little Lawrence'. And Lean, wow, what a job.

I had Paul Stokes re-enact the scene in Wadi Rumm where Lawrence danced in his Sherifian robes, in the original MS of Olives - A Violent Romance. It was all part of Paul's assimilation, his growing 'Arabness' as he faces precisely the dilemma Lawrence faced as he betrayed 'his' Arabs to the mendacious Sykes-Picot Treaty. Paul was created purposefully in Lawrence's role as betrayer and friend, a foreigner who offers help and is not to be trusted.

The scene didn't make it through into the final novel, I guess I thought it was all a little too much. Anyway, I've got the Director's Cut of Lawrence of Arabia. And now I'm going to watch it...

Book Review: Waiting For Sunrise (William Boyd)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I hate to do this. I have long been an admirer of William Boyd's stuff, but this book was one I had to force myself through, often finding myself skimming. It's always such a disappointment to approach a book by an author whose work you've enjoyed and admired (A Good Man in Africa and An Ice Cream War, his first two novels, had me hooked and I've enjoyed his other work since) and then find yourself increasingly alienated as you realise this just isn't, well, 'doing it' for you.

Waiting for Sunrise is set in the period just prior to, and during, the First World War. Lysander Rief is sexually dysfunctional. He visits his psychologist and is entranced by a society beauty he meets there and then joins up when war breaks out. He enters the intelligence service and has to save Britain by discovering a code.

The main character, Rief struck me as being all over the place - I often found myself drawn up to ponder why on earth would he do that or say this? I suppose part of that is because little personality shines through that isn't self-obsessed and obnoxious. A sexual predator with little love for women, Rief is half Austrian but not interred or even interviewed as war breaks out, in fact he is recruited by military intelligence.

There doesn't seem to be much structure on offer here, it reads as if it was made up as we went along. Rief in Austria, Rief the sexual failure, Rief the actor, Rief the upper class twit, Rief the soldier, Rief the spy, Rief the lover, Rief the boozer. They none of them appear to be going anywhere cohesive that follows a growing narrative, they just wander around in Brownian patterns. And they all become a tad exhausting.

There are echoes of TE Lawrence in Rief - his superiority, his drawling insolence at a senior officer over whom he has a hold, his decision to become a private rather than take the commission he could so easily have achieved. And yet they are only echoes - and it's David Lean's Lawrence, not the man himself - there's nothing of the complexity and conflict that make either the real Lawrence or O'Toole's portrayal interesting. Rief isn't, well, driven to anything. He just muddles through.

I liked the setting and I liked the language, Boyd manages to capture the clipped accents of upper class schoolboy amateur spies nicely. There are elements of this book that are brilliant and reflect the talent and experience a much-loved novelist with a stellar career behind him.

But the thing as a whole rambled and just didn't come together for me. I came out of it feeling a little tired and perhaps a tad puzzled. For dark wartime espionage you can't better Alan Furst...

Three stars, then.

You can find the book here.