John Knoerle

"The Proxy Assassin" is the final volume in John Knoerle's "American Spy Trilogy", preceded by "A Pure Double Cross" and "A Despicable Profession". It's 1948 in central Romania (read Transylvania) and the populace is politically divided into Royalists and Communists. The Cold War is heating up precipitously in the neighborhood and everybody's spying on everybody else as the country tries to claw its way out of the nineteenth century. Might be a bad idea, the way things are going. In a soggy valley, high in the Carpathians a three year old child hides in plain sight. He is, we are told, a direct descendent of Vlad Tepes Draculea (read Bela Lugosi) and next in line for the hypothetical throne. This little guy is in danger of being found out by the commies and needs rescuing. Enter our hero, Hal Schroeder, dropped from a low flying DC3, with parachute provided by the CIA. Mayhem ensues. Hal starts calling himself a 'proxy assassin' because every contact he makes on the ground tends to show up dead the next day. Things look grim in Soggy Valley.… (more)

Technically speaking "The Proxy Assassin" is a third in a trilogy. I had never heard of the author before and I had not read the first two so I was a little worried if that one will work out. As it turned out, it did. There are elements that one would have known from the previous books but the author makes a great job of actually getting the needed information to the reader without sounding as if it was a filler. It is almost as if it was a standalone book and these actions and memories were something that happened before the book started, not necessarily in previous books but just in the character's life.

It is 1948, WWII is over and the agents that had been stationed in Europe are back home in the States. At least Hal is - and he had sworn that he will not participate in any more suicide missions. And when a book starts like that, everyone knows what follows - another suicide mission. Add to this the setting in Romania for some of the story (which could have been anywhere in the world really - there was nothing that put the story there - and adding Vlad Tepes in the story (no vampires or rebirths...) does not change this), royals that had been expelled from their country, a few beautiful females (are the ladies in the spy novels something else than perfect?), a few spies, guns and other arms flying all over the place and a story that sounds and feels like a standard Spy story from the era - and not exactly at the same time.

The choice to tell the story in the first character (Hal) and what you get is the voice of a 28 years old veteran of the WWII intelligence and spy services. Something does not sounds exactly right. He sounds too... modern, he sounds more like someone that is born 50 years later than in the pre-war area... It's not exactly anachronistic - there is nothing that jumps. But the attitude is a bit wrong - compared to the rest of the novels set and written in the era... And the character development is not that great in some cases (the Princess for example... or Julia) - they are cast into their roles and in order not to get this wrong, their humanity and the small things that people do and that make them individuals are just missing. But then I did not expect it to be very different and in all honesty, it was even better than I expected.

Which does not make the book less enjoyable. It is a fast read (both the action and the reading going fast easily). And it is a great adventure/spy story - it is almost unbelievable but then it could have happened. Maybe. Or not. But who cares - that's what fiction is all about.

Great literature it may not be but it serves well the purpose of getting you away of now and today for a few hours.… (more)