Book Review - Safe Houses

Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman is a gripping suspense novel where a young woman discovers a nefarious truth at the heart of the CIA’s operations in postwar Berlin and goes on the run for her life until, years later, she’s gruesomely murdered along with her husband, and her daughter begins to chase down the startling secrets from her past.

Dan Fesperman is no stranger to thrill and intrigue. A longtime war correspondent with tours in Baghdad, Sarajevo, Berlin, and Kabul, his work is layered with the particular hues of darkness that can only be found in the shadowy gray line between good and evil. He came late to fiction but is no stranger to success, having won the John Creasy Memorial Dagger Award for Best First Novel, The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller, and The Hammett Prize. Safe Houses showcases a lean, muscular prose that is able to deliver plot points as cleanly and quickly as a switchblade’s twist.

The success of Fesperman’s novel depends on our understanding of what a safe house is both in real life and in metaphor. A safe house can be found being operated by a friendly government in an unfriendly place and is often, as its namesake indicates, a safe place to hole up or do business. These are usually places that blend into the neighborhood and could easily be the home of a model neighbor who doesn’t make noise or cause any problems. A safe house remains safe as long as the enemy doesn’t know where it is.

Helen Abell is a young agent working for the CIA in the 1970s. The Cold War is on, and nowhere is the dark spotlight of intrigue brighter than in Berlin. But young women in the 1970s were supposed to know their place in the world’s intelligence community hierarchy. You could be a secretary or an archivist or even a safe-house keeper, but you could never be an actual agent who deals with the supposed masculine business of intrigue. Unless, of course, the intrigue is thrust upon you during your boring job of maintaining a safe house when you have two unplanned encounters: one that clues you into a global mystery and another that makes you an accessory to the murder of a young woman. For Helen Abell, both of these are true, and she soon finds herself at odds with an agency who would rather her sit behind a desk than solve one mystery, much less two.

Fesperman’s safe house is also a rural home in Maryland where a family of four grew up, with the mother, father, and son still living there. It’s not merely a house; it’s a home. And it’s a place where violence should only be visited by television or movie stars. But when the mother and father are brutally murdered and it’s believed that the son committed the crimes, the house no longer can be categorized as safe.

This is where Safe Houses gathers steam as the two stories, interwoven through time, begin to collide. As Helen unravels her own clues to become the agent for which she was trained while dodging those who would bureaucratically stop her, her daughter must find the true murderer of the couple in the rural Maryland home, gaining the attention of the same people who had been after Helen all of these years...

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To check out the rest of the review, please pop on over to Criminal Element.  Bottom line is that it's a great book. If you do go over to Criminal Element, they also have a great sweepstakes going on if you want to get a free book. The sweepstakes ends July 17th and it's free to participate. 

Book Review - The Darkest Time of Night

The Darkest Time of Night by Jeremy Finley is a fast-paced debut thriller full of suspense and government cover-ups, which explores what happens to people’s lives when our world intersects with the unexplainable.

We had an event called the Pinewood Derby back when I was in Boy Scouts. We were encouraged to build a car from balsa wood to an exact form, add weights, wheels, and paint it to our liking. Then, we’d race our creation to see how well it could do against the other balsa creations. I’d watch each race and become more and more excited as my turn came closer. Then, when it was finally the moment to place my car at the top of the track and let it go, my heart would beat so furiously that I couldn’t imagine it beating any harder. My car started slowly, then picked up speed until it was seriously booking down the decline, moving faster than I could have imagined it would.

So does the plot of Jeremy Finley’s debut novel, The Darkest Time of Night. It starts slow at the top of the run, giving you enough time to observe the characters and see them in real time doing real things, which is how all great thrillers set things up. Then, it picks up speed until it’s finally hurtling down the track. This metaphor wasn’t chosen at random. At the heart of the matter are people who disappear from places all around the globe, many of whom are children. And it is this idea of childhood lost that gave me a moment of childhood remembered, not only with the Pinewood Derby of my own childhood but of the setting of Finley’s plot. The lushness of the Tennessee woods, the otherworldliness of fireflies blinking in the night like earthbound stars, and the idea that the woods behind the house are safe are all things I grew up with. But Finley changes all that and makes the familiar not only suspect but deadly.

Lynn is not your normal heroine. She’s a mother of more secrets than children. She’s the grandmother of a grandson who won’t speak because of what he’s seen and another grandson who’s disappeared, which thrusts them all into the middle of a media blitz—because she’s also the wife of a Senator with presidential aspirations. Her best friend is the sort of friend we all need: someone who won’t take any guff, who might be the sort to sell some pot to a neighbor in need of pain relief, and who will be there when you need her most. Lynn has a green thumb. She runs a greenhouse and raises plants. All in all, she’s a normal woman thrust into an abnormal situation...

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To check out the rest of the review, please pop on over to Criminal Element.  Bottom line is that it's a great book. If you do go over to Criminal Element, they also have a great sweepstakes going on if you want to get a free book. The sweepstakes ends July 17th and it's free to participate. 

My Fourth of July, Star Wars, and Patriotic Butter Molds

This is the second Fourth of July I've spent in a War Zone. The first was 2013 and in Kabul at ISAF Headquarters. I remember the celebrations. I remember that Ollie North took over the top deck of our National Security Element for a press conference. I remember how majestic our flag waved in the cool July night. I also remember later on that evening when I was rucking around the compound. I happened upon General Dunford, commander of all forces in Afghanistan at the time. Our course intersected. He asked me how my Fourth was. I said that it was great. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was trying to work off the great food I had by exercising. He asked, so late? I said, yessir. Then I asked him where he was going. He said to his room so he could finally call his family and wish them a Happy Fourth, after his sixteen hour day. He told me to continue working out. I told him to enjoy his family. He said Huah! I said Huah! Then we parted and went our own ways. I'm sure he forgot our meeting, but I remember ours, and it was the civil simplicity of the moment in the middle of a war zone that stayed with me.

Five years later I found myself at RS (formerly ISAF) Headquarters during the Fourth of July once again. Much of it hasn't changed a bit. It's the same set with different actors. During the day, after several meetings, I had an Italian pizza and a Coke at Cianos and a latte at the coffee shop. The feeling now is different than back in 2013. There's less of a visceral threat. We've just come off a ceasefire and many of those fighting are tired. But the sheer amount of armed and armored men and women wouldn't illustrate that. But there is a different feeling in the air. Either the fear is less, or we've just become that used to it.

During the evening, our cooks prepared what they termed to be a Patriotic Meal. We had roast and ribs and hotdogs wrapped in bacon. We had fruit and vegetables. We had breads and cookies. We had six kinds of ice cream. We even had a butter mold in the shape of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. As wonderful as everything was, we weren't home. We weren't with our families, sitting somewhere on lawn chairs near green grass that has never been dusted with the remnants of a bombing. We didn't tip a beer or a glass of wine or a scotch sitting in a yard that has never had bullets flying through it. We didn't get sunburned playing lawn games with our children or grandchildren near a road where there's never been an IED buried. We didn't even have fireworks. Although had we, watching explosions in the air commemorating a battle in 1812 in a war zone 206 years later would have been a grave punctuation for an uncertain testament on the martial history of our country. Then, later that night, after doing military work, I returned to my room and watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi, an immensely popular and profitable series of films (now owned by Disney) that also promulgates the idea of an intergalactic war, celebrating the sacrifices of those would put themselves in harms way so that the good guys can have a chance to beat the bad guys.

Still, what I remember what resonates with me most this Fourth of July was the butter mold. I found it charming that our foreign staff took the time to try and make our country's birthday memorable and as close to home as possible. They truly went over and above all of my expectations. Patriotic colors were everywhere, from the flags, to the banners, to the red, white, and blue cake that was our centerpiece. But the four foot by two foot butter mold of Mary and Joseph holding a baby Jesus stays with me. Many didn't notice it because on first glance, it wasn't out of place. To add this to our American celebration begged the question whether or not our staff felt that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were American. Truly, our voice has been loud enough for many to believe it is. But in this case, delving deeper, their supposition could have been that Christianity was an American export and something we brought with us to Afghanistan.

If I was a writer, I'd find something interesting to say about that, but instead of Academic critical disassembly, I merely enjoyed the idea and was charmed by the gigantic efforts of our staff to try and make us feel at home. One reason is that I realize how lucky I am. Many of you (and I appreciate it) and many strangers send me emails, texts, letters, cards, etc thanking me for my service and for the hardship I'm putting myself through.

Is it hard? Hell yes.

But it's harder for so many others. I'm an older, pretty senior fella stationed in a city that is the capital of our current war zone. So many are at other sites where an MRE was last night's meal and cold water was all they had to drink. They didn't go back to their room to watch Star Wars. They went back to their bunker to watch for attack.

As I record these thoughts, a movie plays in the background - We Were Soldiers --based on the Vietnam War novel called We Were Solders Once... and Young. The novel, as the movie, isn't a glorification of war, but a reminder of how we thought war was until we actually were part of it. I'm aware that the events of both the movie and the book take place in 1965, the year that I was born.

As it turns out, I am a writer. One of the ways I pay it forward is to write realistic military characters who aren't cliched t-shirt advertisements. I don't write walking patriotic memes. My characters, like those with whom I serve, are multi-dimensional, layered, complex human beings-- as complex as anyone you know -- who just happen to have served in the military and like anything of substance one encounters, are changed by it.

My characters, like real people, begin their military careers highly energized and fight for so many reasons. But no matter how one prepares, they aren't prepared for the toll being in a war can take, both on the mind and the body. Some things one encounters are so terrible that the images of them echo through one's life. Other things are so wonderful that they serve as touch points to a military career.

So when one is presented with a giant butter mold of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, as a thank you for protecting their country and a commemoration of everything it means to be an American, I gladly accept it in the spirit in which it is given. And I say, Happy Birthday, America. Keep trying to do what is right. Keep working at being that shining city everyone is trying to get to. And keep trying to protect those who need protecting.

(Copyright 2018 - Weston Ochse)