cover image The Spy House: A Spycatcher Novel

The Spy House: A Spycatcher Novel

Matthew Dunn. Morrow, $26.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-230949-5

In Dunn’s slow-developing fifth novel featuring Will Cochrane (after 2014’s Dark Spies), the assassination of Israel’s French ambassador puts Israel on the brink of waging a war to end Hamas. Adm. Tobias Mason, an adviser to the U.S. president, creates a joint intelligence outpost in Beirut manned by four top agents—French, British, American, and Israeli—to discover whether Hamas was responsible for the assassination. When the four are found shot dead in their operational headquarters, it appears that American agent Roger Koenig killed them before being killed himself. Mason tasks Cochrane, now a free agent no longer attached to the CIA-MI6 Task Force S, to investigate. A mysterious and shadowy figure known only as Thales puts two able men in motion to stop Cochrane. In addition, a mole in Mason’s office monitor’s Cochrane’s every move. A subplot involving a 12-year-old West Bank youth adds some suspense to this otherwise routine spy thriller. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, Luigi Bonomi Associates (U.K.). (Oct.)