His latest book has multiple layers of intrigue. The plot travels from New York in 1939 to Paris and on to Nazi Germany, through the ravages of Europe, then (after World War 2) to the Ukraine, Moscow and Stalin's gulag archipelago - and finally back to the United States in 2001.
Thomas Danforth, 20-year-old son of a wealthy importer, runs a family importing business in 1939, when the world was on the brink of war. His life and whole future are dramatically changed when a socialite friend and State Department spy, Robert Clayton, recruits him for an espionage operation that involves Anna Klein, a beautiful, accomplished, but enigmatic woman. The story of spooks develops into a saga of betrayal, vengeance and obsessive love.
Danforth tells the complex story back in New York, when he is aged 90, to a young man he has summoned from Washington after (and probably because of) 9/11. He recounts his secret adventures and mulls over his quest to find out about the real Anna and what happened to her.
The tale progresses in continuous jumps between the leisurely modern dialogues in a gentlemen's club and flashbacks to the ancient action, both ricochets told in the present tense.
That format is overworked and annoying.
Deeply felt consequences of treachery are portrayed, with many twists.
Danforth has been tortured both mentally and physically in his search for the fate of Anna. She may not have been the person he first judged her to be; perceptions keeps changing. So he comes to feel "like a character in a Russian novel, love and death mingled in a darkly Slavic way". The mystery consumed his long life. An unusual and at times enthralling tale linking Adolf Hitler's evil world with today's climate of the "war on terror".
- Geoff Adams is a former editor of the ODT.
