December 1, 2022
Kindt (Apache Delivery Service) explores the lives of spies in Europe during World War II in this wildly ambitious short-story collection. Thrilling action and suspense abound in tales like "Chanel," which details a woman's attempt to smuggle top-secret documents into England by swimming there from mainland Europe, and the titular "Super Spy," starring a swashbuckling secret agent using a range of fantastic gadgets to infiltrate an enemy stronghold. The most affecting material here, however--like "Henry," in which an English secret agent posing as a German bureaucrat falls for a woman claiming to be an American intelligence operative, and "Cairo Nights," about a cryptographer smitten with a femme fatale--is less reminiscent of Mission: Impossible than of John le Carr�'s or Alan Furst's depictions of complicated men and women straining to maintain romantic attachments, or to experience anything even close to meaningful connection with another living soul, while embroiled in international espionage with the fate of the free world at stake. VERDICT A tightly plotted, high-stakes masterwork about the terrible cost of life in the shadows.
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