Brian Garfield, Otto Penzler Presents: Hopscotch

Otto Penzler Presents: Hopscotch

Brian Garfield

Forge, Sep 2004, $14.95, 271 pp.

ISBN: 0765309211

Though supposed to be above politics, the Agency is embroiled in internal politics that react to external pressures from the White House and Congress. Thus, it is not surprising that his employers force long time out in the cold agent Miles Kendig to retire. A man used to living beyond an edge in which every breath could mean death, Miles finds middle age life in America boring as he misses the adrenalin rush that his field missions provided him.

Several years pass. Miles is ready to get back in the game on his terms. This time he will be a rogue exposing the world espionage units to the public as unscrupulous dirty tricks in which murder or ruining someone is a way of life and collateral damage is acceptable as long as the mission is accomplished. Competing spy agencies form strange bedfellows with one quest: destroy Miles before he exposes them. Gleefully, Miles, a veteran of twenty-five years of field work, looks forward to the ultimate cat and mouse game, in which he tossed down the gauntlet.

This is a terrific spy thriller that sort of reminded this reviewer more of the Bourne Identity (second movie) than the Matthau film Hopscotch. Though the novel is from the late-1960s/early-1970s, the storyline remains fresh because the Cold War is more of a backdrop except that detente existed when it is convenient for all parties to fight the common cause, a lone ranger. That intrepid individualism that is rare to see in a society filled with profiles and spin doctors is what makes Brian Garfield's thriller hold up as a fabulous espionage thriller.

Harriet Klausner