The Dark Side of The Movies

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It’s week four in our six-week zoom course on neo-noir cinema, a tour through a half-dozen of the best/most interesting/groundbreaking films in this genre, and we’re leaving bloody footprints in our wake. Having to watch a movie for “homework” is the best! So, you may wonder, what distinguishes neo-noir from plain old noir?

A few things, but as in all classification schemes involving creative endeavors, the edges blur a bit. The original noir genre includes black and white films produced mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. They involved a femme fatale, some mystery or crime or double-dealing, a hard-to-impress detective trying to work it out, and a lonely, jazzy trumpet. In fact, the sound track alone could send shivers up your back. If that didn’t, the cynicism would. Often urban. The top 5, says Rotten Tomatoes? Laura, Shadow of a Doubt, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, and Sunset Boulevard.

Neo-noir, then, is number one, more recent. These films are in living color, they often still involve a femme fatale, crime, a jaded detective/investigator, and some thematic music that may branch out a bit. The cynicism and double-dealing are still there, of course, and the violence is heightened.

So far we’ve seen The Conversation (1974), which was both more and less than I remembered. Gene Hackman is a professional eavesdropper who doesn’t like what he hears. You may mis-identify the femme fatale, and I could have done without the toilet that explodes in a bloodbath worthy of The Shining. I think that was a hallucination. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola with a fine, understated performance by John Cazale—reason enough to see it again. Not to mention a young Harrison Ford.

Next: Body Heat (1981).No question that Kathleen Turner is the femme fatale here or that the double-dealing involves her lover (William Hurt) and husband (Richard Crenna). Sexy stuff directed by Lawrence Kasdan.

The Coen Brothers first feature film, Blood Simple (1984) was next. Frances McDormand as the put-upon wife never realizes she’s a femme fatale, despite the body count evidence. The extent to which the characters misunderstand what’s going on has definite comic moments.

Last night we did our homework and watched L.A. Confidential (1997). It has it all, FF, crime, double-dealing, rampant cynicism, and appreciably more violence than the others. Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, and Guy Pearce are great as cops trying to figure out what side of the law they’re on. Directed by Curtis Hanson.

Two more to go!

Writing as Espionage

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spy, espionage, reading

As a new generation of excellent spy fiction writers emerges in the West, I took a sentimental look back at one of my American favorites—the late Charles McCarry, writer par excellence, former CIA man, and undercover operative in Africa, Asia, and Europe. I discovered an old interview with him and found great insights for authors of every genre.

In his first novel, The Miernik Dossier, published in 1973, he was already thinking about the challenges of being a novelist. Paul Christopher, protagonist of at least ten of his novels, says, “There is an artistry to what we are doing: spies are like novelists—except that spies use living people and real places to make their works of art.” In the interview, McCarry reiterated his view that there’s a striking similarity “between the creative process and tradecraft.”

The spy’s clandestine operation is the plot with almost inevitable twists and turns; agents are akin to stories’ protagonists; and the people they interact with are love interests, antagonists, and other sometimes disruptive characters. Authors often complain about their fictional characters not sticking to the plot—“minds of their own.” They go off the page, introduce unexpected complications, misbehave. Certainly, real-life people often don’t do what you expect or want them to, either.

A lot of story complications and their fallout emerge from below the writer’s conscious level. As a person who’s a “pantser”—that is I write by the seat of my pants, rather than with elaborate notes and outlines—I appreciate McCarry’s saying that, for him, writing remained a mystery, as with spying, where “I never quite understood what was going on.” I can relate. In my novel, Architect of Courage, there was a lot in there that I didn’t even realize until I was finished. “Oh, yeah. The subconscious mind at work again.”

McCarry created a character who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the book Shelley’s Heart. This fictional person turned out to be much more significant than McCarry expected. “Every morning when I sat down to write my 1,500 words, he would pull some other stunt.” Yet these actions were all perfectly logical in terms of where the plot and characters were going. Somewhere in a writer’s head, he believed, the brain must be assembling elements and figuring out how they work together.

One time in Kyoto, McCarry was in a Buddhist temple, trying to meditate, and discouraged that he couldn’t clear his mind and concentrate. The Zen master said something to this effect, “Don’t you realize that what those monks are trying to achieve is what you achieve every time you write a poem or a story? That is, the opening of consciousness.” Sliding open the doors between the conscious, the unconscious, and the subconscious, so that the work can be influenced by all three.

Acclaimed author Robert Olen Butler says you’re most likely to have access to the subconscious in the early morning while you’re still half-asleep! Before caffeine, the phone, and your analytic, goal-oriented mind take over. You can sometimes tell when a piece of writing was dominated by the author’s conscious mind—or as I think of it, their head not their heart. It may be logical, but it’s thin. It hurtles head-long toward a fixed goal (conclusion), when the characters clearly want to do something else. Artists in many fields talk about arriving at a trance-like state, when they’re deeply submerged in the creative process. Writers do too! In other words, basically, they make their “whole mind” work for them.

Recent espionage novels I’ve especially enjoyed:
The Translator by Harriet Crawley
The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry
Moscow X by David McCloskey
All three novels by James Wolff that shatter spy stereotypes. The first: Beside the Syrian Sea.

The Serpent Dance

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With Sofia Slater’s latest crime mystery, you have not only an intriguing whodunnit, but, although it’s set in contemporary times, The Serpent Dance feels like a trip back in time to the era when Cornish midsummer revelries first involved bonfires, iconic music, river offerings, and the creation of wicker animals, later consumed by the ritual fire. Slater draws on the persistence of these ancient practices, mixing the traditional and the modern in ways that occasionally baffle her protagonist.

London graphic designer Audrey Delaney’s boyfriend of ten months, Noah, has planned a surprise getaway for them. She’s convinced herself (and prematurely told all her friends) that he’s taking her to Paris. When it turns out they’re headed to the fictional Cornish village of Trevennick, she tries not to show her disappointment, but Noah realizes he’s missed the mark.

From there, their situation goes from bad to much, much worse. Their B&B is a modern, glass-walled home overlooking the river. Inside, it’s open-plan carried to an extreme. Their landlady will be staying in the master bedroom, with just a wisp of separation between her and the guest bedroom.

Their hostess is a renowned television personality, and Noah takes to her with unexpected enthusiasm. Something isn’t right. Why this place? What’s Noah’s real agenda? Why his interest in this older woman? The twisting lines of the eponymous serpent dance itself can’t compare to the secrets Audrey is about to discover.

No need to worry be jealous of their hostess, though, because before morning she lies dead in a pool of blood, a knife to her throat. The police initially consider it a suicide, but elements of the crime scene simply don’t add up. Since Audrey and Noah are the only other people in the house, and since anyone else padding about could not do so without risking being seen (all those glass walls), police attention is on them. On Noah, particularly.

The town is preparing for the midsummer Golowan festivities, masks and wicker obby orses everywhere. It’s a deeply local tradition and outsiders aren’t especially welcome, especially when the shadow of murder has fallen on them.

Though Noah is tucked away in jail, their hostess’s isn’t the only body to turn up. Audrey tackles her predicament in the way she tries to work through any difficult circumstance, by drawing, and the realism of her depiction of Stella’s corpse, among other local characters is inevitably misunderstood. It’s a classic case of being out of one’s own element. This profoundly unsettling atmosphere makes Audrey anxious about the wrong things, so that she doesn’t recognize the danger to herself.

I found the mix of past and present, culture and calamity quite captivating. Nice job, Sofia Slater! Order your copy here.

Weekend Movie Pick: Coup!

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My ideal moviegoing situation is to know nothing, literally not one thing, about a movie before I see it. Too often, previews either show all best jokes (Thelma, a case in point) or set up impressions that don’t fit the actual film. Sadly, my preferred state of blissful ignorance is hard to achieve.

Thus, I was delighted to see Coup!, a dark comedy about which I knew nothing and had not detected any buzz, written and directed by Joseph Schuman and Austin Stark (trailer). The anxiety I felt in the first half-hour or so was strictly the result of the puzzling situation the characters were in, not any trailer-review-celluloid mismatch. So, in case you’re spoiler-averse like me, I should stop here, except to say, see it!

In case you do like a little info, however, I’ll say that it’s set on an island near New York City during the deadly 1919 Spanish Influenza pandemic. A wealthy family living in isolation on the island is determined that they won’t be among its victims. They’re living in perfect isolation. But hey, nothing’s perfect, is it? And, they need a new cook.

The man they hire we know is not who or what they think he is. Still, times are hard, the island is isolated (the ferries stop!) and there aren’t a lot of choices. The wealthy homeowner is a muckracking journalist and a hypocrite, sending editorial salvos toward President Wilson for not taking more drastic anti-influenza measures. He pretends to be facing the peril shoulder-to-shoulder with his brethren in the City, when really, he’s safely in his mansion, miles away. He, his lovely wife, and children are going it alone—that is, with their three servants and new cook. They’re vegetarian, its nearly winter, and when the markets close . . . well, life is hard and getting harder by the meal.

There’s a lightheartedness to their dire situation and the infectious smile of Peter Sarsgaard (the iconoclast cook) somehow makes everything better. Great acting all around The journalist is played by Billy Magnusson, and Sarah Gadon plays his wife. The maid (Skye P. Marshall) and chauffeur (Faran Tahir) gradually (and charmingly) get drawn into the cook’s schemes, and only the housekeeper (Kristine Nielsen) is onto him. Now, how to get rid of her? Hmmm.

I thought it was a lot of fun and, in light of our recent covid trials, provides some food for thought, too.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 78%; audiences: 94%.

Name Your Poison (actually, no, don’t)

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A thought-provoking presentation on poisons at last month’s conference of the Public Safety Writers Association reminded me of a blog post I’d written a while ago. Such a relief for a crime writer to get away from guns for a while—and don’t even talk about knives! The tagteam presentation by Janet Gregor and Gloria Casale prompted me to update my earlier post. Plus, it gives me a chance to use this painting of “Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners,” showing she didn’t let an opportunity to conduct scientific research go to waste.

A PBS documentary on poisonings begins: In 1922, 101 New Yorkers hanged themselves, 444 died in car accidents, 20 were crushed in elevators. There were 237 fatal shootings, and 34 stabbings. And that year, 997 New Yorkers died of poisoning.

Not all those deaths were intentional, it turns out. A century ago, life was full of poisoning hazards at work and at home. You may remember the below-stairs tour of cleaning products, rat poisons, polishes, and “remedies” in the movie Gosford Park, each one of which looked mighty suspicious when the master was murdered.

A major cause of death was carbon monoxide (CO), an odorless, tasteless gas that got into the air thanks to leaky stoves and gaslights piping. Even today, when houses are shut up tight for winter, we still hear about deaths from malfunctioning space heaters or, difficult to believe though this is, charcoal grills people roll inside to heat up the house. You may remember when seven members of a Minnesota family died of accidental CO poisoning in December 2021.The culprit? A faulty furnace.

apothecary bottles, poison

Still, poisonings are much rarer today than they used to be because in 1917 New York City hired Dr. Charles Norris to be the city’s (and the nation’s) first chief medical examiner. Norris, born into a wealthy family, was one of those larger-than-life characters who create their own weather. Norris, in turn, hired Alexander Gettler to head the City’s first toxicology laboratory. Gettler and his staff built the field of toxicology from scratch, and he and Norris created modern forensic science. CSI fans are grateful.

As they brought science to the analysis of murder victims, murder by poison became less and less feasible. A fun (!) read is The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy. During his lifetime (120-63 BCE), Mithradates Eupator fought some of the most famous Roman generals, mostly successfully. At the height of his career, he governed 22 nations around the Black Sea and could speak all of their languages. And, he was an infamous poisoner. He believed that was how his mother murdered his father, so, to protect himself, he learned as much as he could about them.

One protection he engaged in was to take small doses of certain poisons every day to build up his tolerance. As a result, when Mithradates’ enemies gave him a lethal dose of something, it had no effect, which didn’t hurt his reputation for invincibility. He also developed a “universal antidote” to poison, still of scholarly interest. When the Romans finally captured Mithradates, he tried to commit suicide by poison, but his protection worked too well, and he was ultimately stabbed to death. Gardeners may recognize the King’s name: Eupatorium is a genus of flowering plant with several hundred species, including (and in my garden) Joe-Pye Weed. One of its species is, of course, poisonous to humans.

Much as Americans complain about “government regulations,” before the Food and Drug Administration took dangerous patent medicines off the drug store shelves in the 1920’s, and before there was a Consumer Product Safety Commission, and before the workplace safety rules that protect people like the poor young women who worked as radium dial-painters and died horribly of jaw and bone cancer, everyday life was full of deadly hazards, and mystery writers had one more handy tool in their store of potential mayhem-makers.

Want more?
12 Toxic Tales from National Geographic
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor—fascinating!!
The Poison Artist fiction by Jonathan Moore – great use of the weapon

“Tell Me What You Think the Problem Is”

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French Windows by Antoine Laurain

This unconventional short novel by French author Antoine Laurain, translated into English by Louise Rogers Lalaurie, proves once again that delving into another person’s psyche is tricky business. You know from the cover that the book is a murder mystery, but what is this murder? When and where does it occur? And when the event finally appears in the story, the victim and perpetrator are a surprise. What the book has been up to in reaching that point is a trip through the richly imagined garden of a psychiatric patient’s mind.

Parisian psychiatrist Dr. J. Faber relates his encounters with a new patient, Nathalia Guitry, a beautiful young woman who is a successful photographer. But she’s stopped taking pictures. In fact, she says the last photograph she took was of a murder. Shocked, Faber ends the session. Nathalia returns for a second appointment and reveals that she spends her days observing the people in the flats opposite hers. Observing is what she’s good at, after all.

To get their conversations started, he suggests she write down what she thinks she’s seeing—the stories of these other people’s lives. He hopes her written words will be a window into her own thoughts. She agrees, and she writes interesting and clever stories from these other people’s points of view, which become chapters in the book. Some of these stories become so engaging, you may wish they weren’t so short. They also capture many aspects of daily life in Paris, deconstructing French people’s attitudes and preoccupations. I felt as if that apartment building revealed an entire world through its residents’ friendships, regrets, ambitions, and longings.

But what about that murder? You just have to wait for it

Order a copy here.

Jack & I

Laury Egan’sJack & I is the dark tale of a 16-year-old New Jersey boy growing up in a succession of foster homes offering varying degrees of sympathy and exploitation. Most of his problems result from undiagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder – what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.

Sometimes, Jack is his painfully shy and socially inept self, but when his alter ego takes over he is brash, aggressive, and predatory. The unpredictable emergence of this other Jack (whom I’ll call Jack2 for this review) is one of the reasons foster families don’t keep him long. Egan states up-front that her depiction of Dissociative Identity Disorder takes a few liberties for fiction’s purposes, but the condition usually originates in early childhood trauma. Jack has learned not just to seal off this trauma, he also hides the existence of Jack2. He has only fragmentary memories of Jack2’s misdeeds, and sometimes none at all, though he has to bear the punishment and social exclusion that result.

While Jack is a sympathetic character, Jack2 is not, and with a story involving the sexual exploitation of minors Jack and I is a difficult read. The depravity of the adults involved is shocking, but Jack2 is completely complicit and is disdainful of Jack, upon whom his whole existence depends. But don’t despair. At last, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

The previous book by Egan reviewed here, The Psychologist’s Shadow, also featured a significant psychological component, and the author handles these issues with great sensitivity.

Itʼs an extreme case study, yes, as well as a reminder of how badly the world treats the most vulnerable among us and how high the stakes are.

Order a copy here.

Weekend Movies? Fun, but not Must-Sees

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The Widow Clicquot

We liked the movie The Widow Clicquot, because, well—France, champagne, why not? You know, the orange label (trailer). The scenery was beautiful, and the film was directed by Thomas Q. Napper. Though the predictable plot didn’t break any new ground, it lulls you into a deep sense of enjoyment. In the early 1800s, the unexpectedly widowed Barbe-Nicole Clicquot (Haley Bennett) can either give up or resolve to implement the vision of her late, adored husband (Tom Sturridge) as to how a champagne winery should operate. The odds are against her.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 85%; audiences: 85%.

Thelma

It’s exhilarating to see June Squibb, as an irrepressible 93-year-old woman doing her thing, not to mention the last performance of the late Richard Roundtree (trailer). Both of them made the film worthwhile, though it was a little disappointing that director Josh Margolin didn’t stretch them beyond the predictable. In the story, grandma Thelma is bilked out of $10,000 by a scammer pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger). How she resolves to get her money back and becomes a superannuated action hero to try, is the plot. I must say that, although there are comic moments, having seen most of them in multiple viewings of the film’s trailer, not much was left to discover! Parker Posey, as Thelma’s daughter, is a terrifying helicopter mom. But, if you’re feeling old and cranky, it’s a good one.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 99%; audiences: 83%.

What’s Up(state)?

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Our recent trip to Glens Falls, New York, included a number of interesting stops. We’d never visited West Point, perched high above the Hudson River and embracing more than 200 years of history. Not only was it picturesque, it was crammed with interesting monuments and memorabilia. The photo shows part of the Great Chain, which the Continental Army strung across the Hudson to keep British ships from sailing upriver from New York during the Revolutionary War.

West Point was strategic then, located above a spot where the river narrows and bends sharply, forcing ships to slow down—better targets! And it’s strategic now, ever since the US Military Academy was established there in 1802. Even as far north as West Point, the Hudson is a tidal river and the shifting tides made that stretch of water all the more difficult to navigate. The 65-ton chain forced them to do more than slow. They had to stop.

With Fort Ticonderoga situated at the foot of Lake Champlain (visited last year) and Fort William Henry, which we visited this month, at the foot of Lake George (named for the King—we were still British subjects when the fort was built, of course. The builders were “managing up,” the guide said), the strategic value of these several waterways was certainly recognized by the early colonists.

Fort William Henry is best known for its role in the French and Indian War. It was besieged by French general Louis-Joseph Montcalm. Despite being well provisioned, after a certain point the fort, commanded by Lt. Col. George Monro could not hold out. It surrendered, and Montcalm let the several thousand British troops, their families, and hangers-on walk out, destined for Fort Edward downstream. Denied the plunder they’d been promised, the native tribes who were allied with the French attacked the retreating columns, killing and wounding about 200 of them.

If this all sounds familiar, it may be because you’re recalling James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans, which centers on this episode. I must have thrilled to the movie version featuring Daniel Day-Lewis at least a dozen times!

Our third notable history pilgrimage was to the cottage where Ulysses S. Grant died in the hills above Wilton, New York. Dying of throat cancer, his doctors wanted him out of New York City in the summer heat, and Grant wanted the chance to finish his memoirs (considered by historians one of the best books written by a former President, and one of the best-selling books of the 19th century). Having surrendered his military pension on becoming President, he hoped the book would create income for his family to live on after he died. It did. He finished the memoir, The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, on July 18, 1885, eight days before his death. His friend Mark Twain, who had a publishing company, published it and hit upon a novel marketing scheme: he had veterans of the Civil War sell it door-to-door. His funeral train pictured below.

Traveling to Upstate New York

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If you’re on I-87 or I-90 skirting Albany, you might want to think twice about not stopping. A visit to New York’s state capitol building is well worth a visit. And there are tours. Here are some fun facts we learned. 1. Construction delays and cost overruns are nothing new. (Huh!) When it was finally finished in 1899, 32 years in the making, the Empire State’s new building had cost more than the US capitol in Washington, D.C. It sounds as if Governor Teddy Roosevelt gave up and finally declared it finished. 2. The Senate Chamber is so acoustically well designed that a state senator cannot speak to a colleague sotto voce without risking being heard. To have a quiet conversation, Senators duck into one of the chamber’s two massive (solely decorative) fireplaces. Talk about a fireside chat! Oh, and 3. It was the first public building in the US to have electric lights.

The results of lengthy refurbishment are spectacular. The assembly chamber is now being reconstructed, so we couldn’t visit it, but the other refurbished areas, including the Senate Chamber (pictured in part, above), are truly impressive. Most inspiring are the grand staircases (pictured below).

The stonemasons came mostly from the UK. They did their carving on the stone after it was in place, by the way, often working many stories up on scaffolding or ladders—not in a workshop on the ground which sounds so much safer. “No OSHA back then,” our guide said. The architect didn’t care what they carved on the column capitals and other large areas—faces, plants, animals, abstract designs—“just don’t carve the same thing twice.” As a result, the carvings are a feast of diversity. Recognizable faces and objects—Lincoln, Frederick Douglass—and imaginary ones surround you.

Capitol buildings become mini-history lessons too. Albany’s Flag Room houses military exhibits and battle flags from conflicts from the War of 1812 to the Gulf War. The Hall of New York features landscape paintings of various state regions—a reminder of what the legislative branch is there to represent. The Hall of Governors gallery displays portraits of 53 of the state’s 57 governors, each with a brief biography. It’s fun to walk that hall saying, “I remember that one!” and noting the governors who became US Presidents and Vice-Presidents. We didn’t see any of those who departed office under a cloud, though at some future point, perhaps they will be “rehabilitated.”

The capitol is located at Washington and State Street in Albany (518-474-2418). Open Mondays through Fridays, 7-7. Free tours weekdays at 10, 12, and 2. Meet at the information desk in the State Street Lobby. To find out about any special tours being offered, visit the Capitol’s website.

Enjoy!

The Translator

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Harriet Crawley’s The Translator—lauded by UK media as one of the best thrillers of 2023—is finally available in the United States. In it, a British translator is called away from his vacation in the Scottish Highlands to accompany the Prime Minister on a lightning trip to Moscow. Clive Franklin is one of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s best Russian-English-Russian translators, and before he can say Kinlochleven, he’s snatched out of his vacation and loaded onto a helicopter. The Prime Minister’s staff has taken care of providing everything—documents, clothing, new business cards, and medications—he’ll need.

While staff members tried to prepare for any contingency, they didn’t anticipate that his opposite number in Moscow, Marina Volina, an equally expert translator for Russian President Nikolai Serov, is someone Clive fell in love with when they both worked at the United Nations. Marina broke it off, married, became a widow, and is now one of Serov’s most trusted aides. When Clive sees her again, he’s smitten anew, and Crawley convincingly portrays the emotion they feel for each other and how hard they must work to hide it in a land of paranoia.

If Marina looks older, tired, it is mostly because a young man she considered her son, Pasha, has died, reportedly of a drug overdose. The morning of the UK-Russia meeting, she receives this note from Vanya, Pasha’s brother: “Pasha was murdered. By your lot.” That is, the FSB (successor to the KGB). It’s unthinkable, but Marina is convinced it’s true.

The UK-Russian discussions do not go well. Underneath all the diplomatic blustering, the Russians are evidently up to something. In her grief and anger, Marina determines to find out what it is, tell Clive, avert some unknown catastrophe, and somehow get herself and Vanya out of the country.

Her chief antagonist is Pasha’s former boss, General Varlamov, deputy director of the FSB, who believes himself in line for the top position. Protecting Russia’s secrets and punishing those who violate them would be his crowning achievement. Varlamov’s spies, cameras, and microphones are everywhere. Resentful of Marina’s close relationship with President Serov, Varlamov makes sure her every move is watched.

At their first Moscow diplomatic meeting together, small talk reveals both Marina and Clive are marathon runners. Training for the forthcoming Moscow marathon helps Marina keep her wits about her. Serov encourages Clive to enter also, thinking he’ll get a photograph of the Englishman on his knees—some propaganda victory, there. At first Clive demurs, as he hasn’t planned to stay in Moscow for long, but it turns out that practice runs let him and Marina exchange information, as their minders can’t keep up. Hoping he’ll pry some information from her, the Brits ask him to stay. Clive and Marina must carve a path through a cast of interesting and believable characters—spies, diplomats, apparatchiks, and brave anti-regime protestors, friends and enemies alike.

Crawley creates a strong sense of the oppressive atmosphere—constantly watched, every conversation listened to. Marina is playing a dangerous chess game, calculating every move based not only on what she hopes to accomplish, but how it will appear to Varlamov.

The story contains several ticking clocks that raise the tension to keep-you-up-reading levels. There’s whatever the Russians are planning, the timeline of which is uncertain because Serov is dithering. The British want to deploy countermeasures, but need more information to do it in time. There’s the marathon, which is on a date certain. There is Varlamov’s persistent circling closer to the truth about Marina. And, there is the unfolding of the cleverly planned and innocent-seeming actions Marina sets in motion, in order to secure her and Vanya’s escape. Crawley’s expert plotting brings all these streams together in an entirely satisfying way.

I love a good spy story, and The Translator is terrific!