Mystery Ahead 30 Mar 2025 😎 Spies and Spycraft | KARLA'S CHOICE

Write what you know . . . or not

Top secrets, exclusive excerpts and reviews of must-read mysteries every other Sunday from author Carmen Amato. Find more at carmenamato.net/links.

---

#topsecret

My CIA career has come up several times lately, during new release promo events for BARRACUDA BAY, the latest Detective Emilia Cruz mystery.

When I was chatting with House of Mystery podcast co-hosts Alan Warren and Joe Goldberg, one of them asked that given my long CIA career, “Why don’t you write spy thrillers instead of police procedurals?”

It was a fair question. Many retired CIA officers go on to write spy thrillers, like Joe (DEVIL’S OWN DAY, etc) and Jason Matthews (RED SPARROW, etc). But I didn’t have anything clever or different to say that would make me stand out in that crowd.

I did, however, have something to say about how cartels and corruption are eroding Mexico’s rich culture and civil authority. The situation tugs at my heartstrings after years living in the region. Hence the Detective Emilia Cruz series set in Acapulco, otherwise known as Ground Zero for drug war violence.

But I’m not averse to talking about books and spycraft, even on my brand new YouTube channel with UK thriller author Jane Harvey-Berrick: Amato2Berrick Crime Conversations. We’ll be having a series of trans-Atlantic conversations about all things crime fiction. Please subscribe!

In one of our first videos, I show off two CIA challenge coins.

Recently, I shared how my personal experiences have inspired more than one scene in the Detective Emilia Cruz books with fellow author Debra Goldstein. I know she can relate.

Debra is a former judge with meaningful professional experiences that lie behind her award-winning fiction. She left the bench to follow her passion for writing mysteries. Her novels and short stories have received Silver Falchion, IPPY, BWR, and AWC awards and been named as Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Claymore finalists.

Her most recent release is With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying, a collection of 18 award-winning short mysteries, from cozy to dark, centering around family and friends, their sins and sometimes redemption.

---

#excerpt

In keeping with today’s spycraft theme, here’s an excerpt from BARRACUDA BAY in which Emilia picks up on a signal given by an agent to his handlers.

~

The throng outside the embassy shifted as if having taken a collective breath. A man emerged from a break in the line and ambled casually toward the historic brickwork, fumbling to tap a cigarette out of a pack as he walked. After no more than half a dozen steps, he stopped and lit the cigarette with a disposable lighter, making a painfully slow production out of the simple act.

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Emilia tapped at her phone as if making another call, glad for the camouflage afforded by the Smithsonian bag looped around one wrist. Was he looking at her? Was he waiting for her?

Whether he knew it or not, the man across the street made an easily seen target against the white painted bricks. He finally got his cigarette lit, sucked hard and exhaled a stream of smoke that hung in the bright, cold air. Definitely Mexican, wearing a dark blue puffer jacket unzipped over a brown suit. At least four inches of wool hem hung below the bulky nylon. The mismatch, along with a rumpled head of hair and the way he kept rocking on the balls of his feet, suggested that clothing choice wasn’t high on his list of priorities right now.

His indifferent gaze passed over her and everyone else on that side of the broad avenue as traffic cruised between them.

A dark sedan slowed as it passed the main embassy entrance and the two historic façades. As it passed him, Puffer Jacket looked back in the direction the car came, as if wanting to avoid making eye contact with anyone inside.

The sedan continued down the street, showing Emilia a white license plate with black letters and numbers, with a red and yellow design along the bottom edge. Two men in dark uniforms and ball caps were in the front seat.

Emilia felt sick. The busy cityscape swung around her. Of course Campos’s killers knew she’d go to the embassy for help. They had her identification, her passport, everything.

Puffer Jacket flicked away the half-smoked cigarette and walked after the sedan. As he crossed the intersection, he slipped on a pair of sunglasses and picked up speed.

Still on the other side of the street, Emilia followed, keeping the man in sight, every instinct telling her that his cigarette had been a signal. Whoever he was, he knew the killers.

---

#review

KARLA’s CHOICE by Nick Harkaway

The master of spy fiction, is of course, John le Carré. TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is the classic Cold War counterintelligence tale. There’s a Soviet mole within the Circus, the author euphemism for British Intelligence. George Smiley is the retired spymaster called out of retirement to hunt the mole, reporting to the chief who is known only as Control.

But the very first book in the Smiley saga was THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, a slim volume published while the author was still working for British Intelligence. The book was a monster hit and turned into a movie starring Richard Burton as doomed British intel officer Alec Leamas who goes behind the Iron Curtain in a risky operation and is killed at the Berlin Wall.

TINKER, TAILOR came next, but never really addressed the impact of Leamas’s death on George Smiley or any of the other Circus characters. Until now.

Nick Harkaway is le Carre’s son, who grew up having his father read portions of works-in-progress to him. So he was the perfect person to write a book that takes place between SPY and TINKER, TAILOR, showing how shaken everyone was by the failure of the Leamas operation and the missing backstory of Karla, the shadowy Soviet spy who is Smiley’s nemesis in TINKER, TAILOR and later in SMILEY’S PEOPLE.

Harkaway does all this in KARLA’S CHOICE while giving the story it’s own decisive plot. All the Circus characters from the other Smiley books—Toby Esterhase, Peter Guilliam, Bill Haydon, etc—are there, being positioned for what will happen later in his father’s books.

A Hungarian who escaped Communist rule alone at age 16, Susanna Gero is now secretary to László Bánáti, a fellow Hungarian who runs a publishing house in London. One day, Susanna is alone in the office when a strange man comes looking for Bánáti in order to assassinate him.

Susanna turns for help to the secretarial agency that placed her, which has ties to the Circus. The would-be assassin has had a change of heart and reveals that he’s been sent by Moscow. Bánáti is not a Hungarian after all, but a Soviet sleeper agent who has run afoul of his masters in Moscow. But why?

It’s up to Smiley to figure this out even as Bánáti is on an increasingly dangerous quest behind the Iron Curtain.

The book is filled with brilliant prose, with the kind of vocabulary that has gone out of style. Descriptions conjure mental images of the “unconvincing modern veneer” on a file cabinet. Cheap hotel beds: “Only the mattresses were traditional: flat, flaccid lozenges lying inert on their imported pine frames.” (I’m going to re-read and annotate as a lesson in better writing.)

As in TINKER, TAILOR, much of the story is told through passages in which someone is telling Smiley about past events, complete with slang terms and allusions to historical events. These voices are written so well, you can almost hear the conversation as dramatic events are retold, punctuated with drags on a cigarette or a boozy belch.

Smiley must piece together yet another Soviet puzzle, going both into the past and anticipating the future in order to resolve the present. Soviet evildoer Karla, whose true name no one knows, is an off-screen presence. Yet at the end his choice perfectly sets the stage for what is to come in TINKER, TAILOR.

KARLA’S CHOICE is a brilliant book that continues le Carré’s legacy in the best possible way.

---

That’s it for this edition of Mystery Ahead. Thank you for spending this time with me.

Wishing you health, happiness, and more great reads.

All the best, Carmen

PS: To keep this newsletter free, consider buying a book. Or invite me on your podcast or book blog to promote the release of BARRACUDA BAY. Thank you!

PPS: Were you looking for the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library and other free downloads? Find all my reader freebies here.