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Summary
Summary
October, 1948. Former OSS agent Hal Schroeder gets an invitation to Washington D.C. from Frank Wisner, who heads the CIA's new covert ops division. Hal is whisked off to Wisner's Maryland shore retreat and introduced to a brace of Romanian royals, including the scarily beautiful Princess Stela Varadja, a direct descendant of Vlad Tepes Draculea. Then Frank Wisner pops the question. Would Hal consider parachuting into a remote mountain camp to meet with the leader of a group of Romanian anti-Communist guerillas? Hal had already survived two previous suicide missions and a third did not appeal. But he told Frank Wisner he would need a few days to think it over and had some sightseeing to do. As it turns out, Hal gets to do a lot more sightseeing than he bargained for. Proxy Assassin is a journey that brings the American Spy Trilogy to a surprising, and emotional, conclusion.
Author Notes
John Knoerle was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1949 and migrated to California with his family in the 1960s. He has worked as a stand-up comic, a voiceover actor, and a radio reporter. He wrote the screenplay for Quiet Fire, which starred Karen Black and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, and the stage play The He-Man Woman Hater's Club, an LA Time's Critics Choice. He also worked as a writer for Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. His first novel, Crystal Meth Cowboys, published in 2003, was optioned by Fox TV. His second novel, The Violin Player, won the Mayhaven Award for fiction. He is currently at work on the American Spy Trilogy. Book One, A Pure Double Cross, came out in 2008. Book Two, A Despicable Profession, was published in August of 2010.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Knoerle's ace thriller, the third in the American Spy series, chronicles a noirish tough guy's efforts to protect the world from the Red Menace, circa 1944. Knoerle hits precisely the right note of humility and bravado when his protagonist, American Office of Strategic Services agent Hal Schroeder, declares in the novel's prologue: "You wouldn't believe how much crap you get credit for when you're a hero." What follows is a spare, stylish thriller peopled with wisecracking characters straight out of a Billy Wilder flick. Schroeder, a World War II vet marking time as a librarian in his native Cleveland, is tapped by real-life intelligence heavyweight Frank Wisner for another covert ops "suicide mission" in Eastern Europe. He accepts, of course--after which everything spirals blissfully out of control. Robert Altmanesque cameos of historical baddies, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and suave Cambridge Five double agents Guy Burgess and Kim Philby (who made careers of providing British secrets to their Soviet masters) add historical depth to the international political hijinks. However, Schroeder is the star here. The slightly goofy patriot is bright but not extravagantly so--much like author Laura Lippman's nerdy Baltimore PI, Tess Monaghan, or Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks, whose dogged legwork and occasional epiphanies eventually solve the problems at hand. Agent Schroeder is no Sherlock, and that makes him all the more appealing and the novel more accessible. Beguiled readers will want to seek out Schroeder's two prior adventures (2008's A Pure Double Cross and 2010's A Despicable Profession) as a stopgap until Knoerle hopefully blesses fans with a fourth book ( la numerically expansive author Robert Rankin) in this delightful trilogy. A terrific Cold War thriller.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
