FICTION

The Dark Clouds Shining

by David Downing
Soho Crime. (Jack McColl, Bk. 4). Apr. 2018. 384p. ISBN 9781616956066. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9781616956073. THRILLER
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In 1921, retired British spy Jack McColl socks a copper in the snoot and ends up in prison. The Secret Service lures him with a pardon in exchange for off-the-books work in Moscow to unmask an assassination plot whose target is in India. The assassin may well be Aidan Brady, McColl's hated enemy. At breakneck pace, the two opponents race across Eurasia to Delhi. McColl's team includes his lost love Caitlin Hanley drafted into the pursuit by a Cheka boss (Soviet secret police), while Brady has enlisted her husband as a confederate. In Delhi, the denouement provides a worthy ending to the jam-packed McColl books (Jack of Spies; One Man's Flag; Lenin's Roller Coaster). Downing adds a special contemporary note in his depiction of Caitlin's work for women in the USSR, which resounds with Edwardian-era #MeToo experiences.
VERDICT Historical espionage fiction owes much to Downing, who translates his deep knowledge of early 20th-century geopolitics into lively and lusty adventures of the first order. Astute probing into the minds of people enduring upheaval takes this series out of the action genre and into the ambiguity of failed hopes and lost causes. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/17.]
Reviewed by Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA , Mar 15, 2018
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