Moscow exile

Lawton brings the band back together for another virtuoso performance in what continues to be an espionage series of uncommon depth and breadth. London copper turned diplomat Frederick Troy and the protean figure of Joe Wilderness--cat burglar, black marketeer, unconventional spy--share the stage here, along with other regular players in the company, but it is two new characters who steal the show. Charlie Leigh-Hunt is at the center; he's not a spy out of commitment to a cause, just an amiable sort of crook always looking to work "some sort of fiddle," and if that fiddle turns out to be toiling as a "B-side" double agent in the age of the A-list traitors--Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, et al.--so be it. That's before Charlie is transferred to Washington ("caught in the slipstream of the shitstorm that was Burgess") and runs into a society hostess called Coky, who also has a double life and who complicates Charlie's fiddle no end. Lawton jumps back and forth between WWII and the late 1960s, tracking the machinations of Charlie, Coky, Troy, and Wilderness (languishing in a KGB prison after a "bridge of spies" exchange gone wrong). Familiarity with the previous cavortings of this bent band of brothers and sisters certainly helps but isn't necessary; Lawton infuses the entire troupe with sparkling life, using crackling dialogue and rapier wit to bring a Technicolor sheen to the moral ambiguity of the Cold War.

Lawton's disappointing fourth Joe Wilderness novel opens in 1969 on the Glienicke Bridge (aka the bridge of spies) that connected East and West Berlin during the Cold War, but the payoff for that scene, in which British agents have a covert midnight rendezvous with Russians who never show, comes late in the book. The first half meanders through the overlong backstories of Charlotte Mawer-Churchill, an unpleasant social-climber, and the louche Charlie Leigh-Hunt. Both are British; both end up in Washington, D.C., during and after WWII; and both spy for Russia--though why they turned against their country is never satisfactorily explained. Lawton draws on his deep knowledge of the geopolitical and social history of the era, but there's too little of the former and too much of the latter. More seriously, there's barely a whiff of suspense or danger until Joe, an MI6 agent, appears halfway through, and readers will have trouble connecting the dots between Charlotte, Charlie, and Joe in a convoluted plot that leads to Joe being shot and trapped in Russia. This one's for die-hard fans only. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (U.K.). (Apr.)