cover image The Man Who Heard Too Much: The Tenth November Man Novel

The Man Who Heard Too Much: The Tenth November Man Novel

Bill Granger. Warner Books, $0 (264pp) ISBN 978-0-446-51503-0

Agendas public, personal, secret and unknown supply the layers penetrated by the spy Devereaux in Granger's 10th November Man plot. A tape of secret proceedings at a freedom of the seas conference in Sweden is slipped into the gear of an American translator, who is then chased across Europe by both KGB and CIA agents. In the States, a recently defected Russian sailor raises new concerns about a convicted Soviet mole and a plan to infiltrate U.S. intelligence. Whie mourning the end of his affair with journalist Rita Macklin, Devereaux tries to save the life of the translator, who has ties to two Middle Eastern governments and a Vatican intelligence agency, and that of the man's girlfriend, another translator with loyalties to the Lithuanian nationalist movement. Shuttling Devereaux and others from Malmo to Rome via New York, London, Washington, Brussels and Berlin, Granger supports his complex plot on the dark and convincing personal imperatives of his characters. Jarred only by an occasional turgid phrase, this espionage thriller is the November Man's most memorable appearance to date. (Nov.)