Andrew Rosenheim

Espionage dominates the best recent crime fiction

Owen Matthews concludes his magnificent KGB trilogy, and there’s a thrilling debut from David McCloskey, a former CIA Middle East specialist

David McCloskey, author of Damascus Station. [Claire McCormack] 
issue 08 July 2023

The best espionage novels cater to our fantasies while still persuading us of the authenticity of their worlds. Of the titles published this year, two stand out in the field, and each author understands that, in fiction, veracity is not the same as authenticity. In Hemingway’s words: ‘All good novels have one thing in common. They are truer than if they had really happened.’

An extended chase, beginning in Siberia, is a kind of Russian version of The Thirty-Nine Steps

White Fox (Bantam, £18.99) is the concluding volume of a trilogy of thrillers by Owen Matthews, one of the best of many western writers on Russia. It can happily be read on its own, though it is sufficiently gripping to send readers back to the earlier two books. It begins in 1963, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy. Matthews’s protagonist, Alexander Vasin, a KGB officer, is now the director of a labour camp deep in Siberia, having effectively been exiled by his enemy and superior, General Orlov.

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