Winter Work

Starred review from May 23, 2022
At the start of this superb spy thriller set in 1990 from Fesperman (The Cover Wife), Emil Grimm, who’s soon to be discharged from the foreign intelligence service of East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, is walking in the woods near his “dacha” north of Berlin when he comes across a crime scene. Investigators are prowling near a body, which Grimm helps identify as his fellow Stasi officer, Lothar Fischer, with whom he was working on a final operation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The gun in Fischer’s hand suggests he died by suicide, but Grimm suspects otherwise. Meanwhile, CIA agent Claire Saylor (last seen in The Cover Wife) is in Berlin on a mission that leads her to cross paths with Grimm. Fesperman nicely works historical figures such as Markus Wolf, “the Stasi’s most renowned spymaster,” into the complex plot while painting an evocative portrait of East Berlin, “spying’s most storied theme park.” A surprisingly moving bond develops between Saylor and Grimm, who fears prosecution or worse after reunification, as the action builds to a deeply satisfying denouement. Cold War–era spy fiction doesn’t get much better than this. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary.

Starred review from May 15, 2022
The Berlin Wall has just fallen, but following the murder of a close colleague, disillusioned Stasi veteran Emil Grimm finds that escaping his life in East Germany is as risky as ever. In the chaos following the historic event, intelligence is up for grabs, pitting Russians against Americans against Germans for the names of thousands of agents in the field. Emil lives in a dacha in the woods north of Berlin with his bedridden wife, Bettina, who has ALS, and her caretaker, Karola, who, with the tacit approval of Bettina, has become a second wife to Emil. Among their neighbors is Emil's former boss, renowned spymaster Markus Wolf (one of the real-life figures in the book). After the murder of Lothar Fischer, his friend and co-conspirator, Emil reaches out to CIA agent Claire Saylor, who has been dispatched to East Germany in hopes of learning the identity of a mole at Langley. He promises to swap her crucial information in return for her getting himself, Bettina, and Karola--who proves to be a great partner in surprising other ways--to freedom. In a kind of woodlands pas de deux, Claire (the protagonist of Fesperman's 2021 gem, The Cover Wife) becomes increasingly invested in Emil's cause. Until the thrilling climax, what's at stake--what the pitched strategic battles are about--is treated almost as an afterthought. It's the gamesmanship that matters most. Emil's secret meetings with Wolf have the color and bounce of a much finer wine than the one they're drinking. A local cop bonds with Emil even as he is being played by him. When a recently retired spy named Clark Baucom says to Claire, "This is all getting pretty complicated," she's not at all unhappy about that. An engrossing, deep-in-the-weeds thriller.

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Starred review from June 1, 2022
The East German intelligence organization is in free fall after the demise of the Berlin Wall, and Stasi colonel Emil Grimm is among those at risk. Sequestered at his dacha in the mountains near Berlin, Grimm is planning one last op, this one personally rather than politically motivated. That plan, however, is in jeopardy after his fellow plotter, Lothar Fischer, is found murdered. Meanwhile, as Americans, West Germans, and Russians dig through Stasi detritus, hoping to recruit (or perhaps silence) former agents, Grimm forms an unlikely alliance with the CIA's Claire Saylor (The Cover Wife, 2021), who is hunting for a mole in the CIA (yes, there's always a mole somewhere). Will she agree to help Grimm secure passage to the West for himself, his ALS-afflicted wife, Bettina, and her caregiver, who (with Bettina's approval) is also Grimm's lover? The story leads to an exciting conclusion--a thoroughly surprising spin on the typical spies-on-the-run finale--but it is the relationships among the principals that give the novel its depth and power. Like Joseph Kanon in The Berlin Exchange (2021), Fesperman builds his story around the inner lives of his characters, an approach that transforms typical espionage tropes into universal human drama. Grimm explains that finally he is working not for the state but for his ""own Nation of Three . . . perhaps the only worthy cause he had ever served.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.