Character-driven international spy thriller set during the deep
London fog of 1952.British novelist Starling (Vodka, not reviewed)
smartly centers his mystery around the honest, regular-guy
character of Herbert Smith, formerly a secret agent in MI5, now a
rookie detective in the Murder Squad at New Scotland Yard. When a
floater turns up in the Long Water of Kensington Gardens, probably
forcibly drowned, Smith gradually unravels the man's identity. Max
Stensness, a homosexual grad student at King's College and
card-carrying member of the Communist Party, hinted right before he
died that he was in possession of knowledge that would change the
world. Smith links Stensness to the detective's former boss,
Richard de Vere Green, a slippery glad-hander whose duplicity
forced Smith to resign from MI5 18 months before. With the help of
Hannah Mortimer, who lost her sight due to experiments performed in
Auschwitz on her and her now-dead twin, Smith widens the net from
de Vere Green, who used Stensness as a lover and an operative, to
Russian journalist Alexander Kazantsev and American CIA officer
Ambrose Papworth. The deceased had appointments with all of them in
the park the night he was drowned. Moreover, the top-secret
information on DNA Stensness was ostensibly offering had also lured
Linus Pauling and Fritz Fischer (an alias of the still-at-large
Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele), scientists and colleagues at
Caltech University who were marooned in London because of the fog.
Starling compresses many elements-the McCarthy era's heightened
anti-Communist suspicions, still-sore war wounds, early
explorations into the DNA double helix and the noxious, historic
London fog-into an intriguing, if murky, mystery.Multi-layered
fiction playing skillfully with shades of fact. (Kirkus Reviews)
In 1950s London, an MI-5 outcast stumbles upon a secret that will
change the world - if he can stay alive long enough to tell it. A
page-turner for fans of 'Enigma' from the bestselling author of
'Messiah'. London, 1952. As the fog rolls in, the chase begins... A
stranger's approach offering highly sensitive information seemed
routine to an ex-spy turned policeman. But when a body turns up
instead of state secrets, Detective Inspector Herbert Smith finds
himself in a race against time to solve the murder. For he is not
the only one after the dead man's secret. It seems the CIA, KGB and
MI-5 are all vying to get to the truth first and some are prepared
to kill for it. As the Great Smog descends on London, bringing
chaos and death, Herbert finds himself facing one of the greatest
evils of the twentieth century. At stake is the biggest prize of
all: the key to life itself.
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