cover image The Prisoner’s Wife

The Prisoner’s Wife

Gerard Macdonald. St. Martin’s/Dunne, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-59180-9

British YA author Macdonald (The Boy Who Won the Pools) makes his adult debut with a thoughtful, low-key spy thriller set in 2004. Desperate for work, former American intelligence agent Shawn Maguire agrees to try to find Darius Osmani, a suspected Pakistani terrorist kidnapped by the CIA, from which Maguire was fired for his violent temper and excessive drinking. Osmani supposedly possesses nuclear secrets, and Maguire’s client, a shadowy arms dealer, doesn’t trust the CIA to keep those secrets out of Pakistani hands. In Paris, Maguire meets Osmani’s wife, the captivating Danielle Baptiste, and together the pair go in search of the captive—through France, Britain, Morocco, Egypt, and finally Pakistan. The action-starved plot sputters at times as Maguire ponders his past, present, and future. Yet Macdonald’s compelling portrait of his protagonist as a man scarred by professional failure and personal grief will keep patient readers turning the pages. Agent: Peter Buckman, the Ampersand Agency. (May)