The implosion of the Soviet empire was greeted with a sigh of relief in democracies by all but the cloak-and-dagger novelists. Who would replace the Soviet Union as the common enemy? To be sure, terrorists are sinister, but they lack the cohesiveness that was a mark of the KGB.
Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille, 388pp, 2016 Grand Central paperback. Available at Asia Books and other leading bookshops, 315 baht
Despite their efforts to bring about the Crusades in reverse, no Saladin figure has arisen to unify and lead them. Then the novelists noticed something. The failure of its 70-year experiment with Marxism had only brought Russia to its knees, not taken it out. It was getting up again.
Its objective — to vie with the US for supremacy — was dusted off. The KGB was renamed the SVR. Same difference. The Cold War went into second a phase. Since both sides have nuclear arsenals, the novelists are delighted again. They need no longer search for a global villain to excoriate.
A case in point is Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille, one of America’s top espionage authors. His literary creation, John Corey, is a hero for all seasons. When not overcoming Yemeni Terrorists, he’s keeping Russian UN diplomats under surveillance.
Our hero can handle just about every problem involving national security, but not his State Department wife, Kate, who is having an affair with her boss. He’s teaching his partner the ropes and can’t help noticing that Tess is attractive. Their assignment is to not let Vasily Petrov — SVR Colonel — out of their sight.
They have yet to learn that Petrov, who loses them, has a nuclear bomb and means to blow up Manhattan from a Saudi yacht off the island. How the twosome hunt him down and board the yacht full of heavily armed Russians (no Saudis) takes up the latter part of the story.
True to thriller tradition, there’s a shoot-out in each of its three-dozen chapters, Tess doing her share of the killings. The SVR men are clearly deficient in target practice. As for defusing the bomb in minutes, credit goes to the CIA/FBI/NYPD and, it goes without saying, to John Corey.
If the author is to believed, that was only the end of plan A. Moscow has not only a plan B but plans for the rest of the alphabet. The novelists will be busy for some time to come. And as for John and Tess, need you ask?
No Mortal Thing by Gerald Seymour, 408pp, 2016 Hodder and Stoughton paperback. Available at Asia Books and other leading bookshops, 625 baht
In Mario Puzo’s footsteps
‘Mafia”, originally the acronym of an Italian revolutionary cry for freedom, has long since changed its meaning to represent Sicilian gangland families. The Camorra was the Naples counterpart. ‘Ndrangheta, in Calabria, was situated between them.
At times they fought one another in wars, finally realising the advantages of keeping their distance. Crime is their business. They are more alike than they care to admit. Their codes of silence and of honour are rigidly enforced. Betrayal and adultery lead to torture and death.
With hands in all rackets, they’re enriched by the highly profitable cocaine trade.
Their profits are laundered. Abroad they seek businesses in which to invest. Novelists pen stories about this, combining fiction and fact. In The Godfather, Mario Puzo focused on a mafia family in the US.
In No Mortal Thing, Gerald Seymour opts for Calabrians in Germany. Both have long sequences of ancestors back in the Old Country. Influenced by the popular screen adaptation, I prefer the Puzo scenario, allowing that Seymour’s research in the field is no less comprehensive.
A low-ranked British banker is sent to Berlin on an assignment of minor importance. Sitting in a park, Jago Browne witnesses several men beating and kicking a woman across the way. With passers-by ignoring the outrage, he comes to the rescue, getting punched out as he does so.
Lodging a complaint with the police, he is informed that they are Calabrians in the process of extorting protection money from shop owners. What’s the point of apprehending them when there are so many such gangs? We’re asked to believe that Jago is determined to track them down and get his revenge.
Our Londoner, with a strong sense of right and wrong, proceeds to do just that. From his hiding place in the hills, Jago observes them and details their activities for us.
He finds two local policemen also surveilling them. At the finish some are rounded up, others flee.
This reviewer rates the plot far-fetched, but the author delivers the violence and thrills that are his trademark.
How the established gangs handle the mass of immigrants remains to be seen.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.