I love fiction that includes some political intrigue/espionage, and if it is a mystery/thriller that’s all the better! Cold War timeframe is great if done well (I loved Jake Tapper’s Hellfire Club, for example). Dan Fesperman’s Safe Houses seemed right up my alley, especially as it was praised by Lee Child as being “One of the great espionage novels of our time,” so I was happy to write an honest review in exchange for a copy of this book from Knopf Doubleday and NetGalley.

TBH, at first I had a bit of a hard time getting excited about the story. Set in Berlin in 1979, the story involves a young woman named Helen Abell, who works for the CIA managing a network of safe houses. She is upstairs at one of the houses, having just checked the audio equipment to be sure it is working, when she begins to overhear conversation between two unexpected visitors to the safe house. The story rolls along through four chapters, when WHAM! at the end of chapter 4, we get one of those bombshells that makes you say “whoa!” and then you just HAVE to read on. But then as soon as chapter 5 begins, it is 2014 and there is a man named Henry Mattick in Poston, MD, doing – well, we aren’t sure quite what, and despite some tantalizing clues, his purpose isn’t clarified for quite a while (to say the least). Henry is there at the time of a horrible double murder, and then the story just explodes.

The book  moves the two stories along, back and forth between locations and timeframes, and Henry becomes immersed in the double murder when the daughter of the victims (her parents) hires him to find our why her brother was driven to shoot their parents in their bed. And BTW what the heck does this have to do with the stuff that happened in Berlin?

It’s impossible to discuss it further, either in terms of plot or structure, without committing the sin of revealing spoilers, but I will say that — similar to Jake Tapper’s Hellfire Club — the afterword for Safe Houses KNOCKED ME OUT. BeSURE to read it (in both books).

What a great story! Well written. I look forward to reading more of Fesperman’s books (how have I never heard of this guy??), and heartily recommend Safe Houses – Five Stars.