Safe Houses
A novel
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4.1 • 90 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In “one of the great espionage novels of our time” (#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child), a young woman goes on the run after discovering a dark truth at the heart of the CIA’s operations in postwar Berlin, only to be murdered years later. Now her daughter is determined to uncover the truth.
West Berlin, 1979. Helen Abell oversees the CIA's network of safe houses, rare havens for field agents and case officers amidst the dangerous milieu of a city in the grips of the Cold War. Helen's world is upended when she overhears a meeting between two people unfamiliar to her speaking a coded language that hints at shadowy realities. Before the day is out, she witnesses a second unauthorized encounter, one that will place her in the sight lines of the most ruthless and dangerous man at the agency.
What she has witnessed will have repercussions that reach across decades and continents into the present day, when, in a farm town in Maryland, a young man is arrested for the double murder of his parents, and his sister takes it upon herself to find out why he did it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This effective thriller from Fesperman (The Letter Writer) opens in 1979 West Berlin, where Helen Abell, a low-level CIA functionary, accidentally overhears and tape records a violent encounter between a much higher ranking officer, Kevin Gilley, and a German woman. Helen intervenes, incurring Gilley's wrath; when the woman turns up dead, Helen seeks to bring Gilley to justice. In general, the resourceful Helen does the best she can to deal with the era's sexism with the help of a sisterhood of CIA women determined to make a difference. Flash forward to 2014. Helen and her husband have been murdered on their Maryland farm, and the only suspect is their mentally ill son, Willard. Believing Willard incapable of murder, daughter Anna hires PI Henry Mattick to investigate. Anna is shocked to discover that her mom was once a spy; the reader won't be surprised to learn that Mattick isn't quite what he appears to be or that there are deep, dark secrets within the CIA. Aficionados of quality spy fiction will be rewarded.
Customer Reviews
Loved it
Good story. Good writing. Good characters.