From Publishers Weekly
Deveraux, code-named November, the hero of Granger's popular series ( League of Terror ), is a world-weary secret agent in the mode of Hammett's detective Sam Spade. The analogy is particularly apt, since the McGuffin here is an object, that, like the Maltese Falcon, the reader is not sure really exists until the very last pages. In this case, the object of numerous parties' desire is a Japanese decoding device with amazing capabilities. In 1976, November is set up by his own Section while bringing in from the cold a supposed defector from East Germany's Stasi espionage system. Critically wounded, he winds up on permanent disability. To make matters worse, the agent isn't even really defecting--at least not at the time. The story then leaps forward 13 years to a changed environment, thanks to the rapidly thawing Cold War. November, a relic from another era, is blackmailed into coming out of retirement to infiltrate a gang on the trail of the stolen decoder. A convoluted caper commences involving KGB and Stasi defectors, the Israeli Mossad, the Westies, Japanese gangsters and the real-life Felix Bloch. Eventually, November revenges himself upon the man who shot him and those who set him up. Though its climax takes place only a year ago, the book already has a dated feel, as its fictional circumstances have been outstripped by world events.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Granger's November Man (League of Terror, 1990, etc.) returns to tangle with an unreconstructed, East German spymaster and with his own thoroughly unpleasant boss. In 1976, American intelligence agent Deveraux--who speaks in Hemingway, has no first name, and goes by the code name November at his intelligence agency--follows his creepy superior officer's orders to meet and debrief treacherous East German agent Kurt Heinemann in Europe. Heinemann has been targeted by Israel's Mossad because of his connections to the Olympic massacre and his willingness to deal with the Americans. The meet begins with a rendezvous with Heinemann's teenage sister, whose neuroses include galloping nymphomania, and ends with Heinemann's bullet in Deveraux's chest. Fifteen years later, Heinemann has to bail out of united Germany. Deveraux, out of the service on disability, is ordered to abandon his reporter girlfriend Rita and return to duty. Shadowy, international spies for hire have been sniffing around a supersecret Japanese supercomputer-encoder, and Pendleton, the evil boss, wants Deveraux involved. Wheels whir within wheels. Pendleton is maneuvering Heinemann at the same time that he manages Deveraux. Deveraux works through a mysterious Irishman, Heinemann is working a Russian turncoat. The CIA seems to know nothing. The Japanese mafia is everywhere. Rita, the reporter who was supposed to be out of it, is in the thick of it. Millions of dollars hop in and out of Swiss accounts. Grindingly complex. Readers who fail to follow the intricacies are likely to find themselves getting irritated at the literary mannerisms peculiar to this series. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
