The Double Game by Dan Fesperman

The Double Game Reviews

• 
  Tony

  On the strength of having enjoyed Fesperman's debut novel (Lie in the Dark), I decided to pick this new one up to see if should hunt down his backlist. But it's never a good sign when a book lingers on my nightstand once I've cracked it open, and this one lingered for several months, generally failing to draw me into picking it back up. About 3/4 of the way though, I almost set it aside for good, but then like a desperate weekender at the casino, I threw good money (time) after bad and plowed on until the bitter end. The book suffers from two major flaws to my mind. The first is that the protagonist elicits neither empathy nor interest from the reader -- I just never cared at all what happened to him. The second is that it's a book about books to a certain extent, and when those kind of metatextual frames don't work for me, they really flop hard.
  
  The story follows a divorced, 50ish journalist who is drawn deeply into a web of Cold War-era secrets. Someone using passages (actually pages) from real-life spy thrillers has goaded him into retracing the stations of an old spy network in Vienna/Prague/Budapest/Berlin, one that may or may not be connected to a man who went on to become a bestselling author (kind of an American Le Carré), who himself might have been a spy himself back in the '60s, and possibly a double-agent working for the Soviets. It's all pretty convoluted, and about halfway through the book, there's a passage which gives a little summary, for those struggling to keep up: "I seem to be tracking an informational trail for some sort of courier network set up by [the author] back in the sixties, when he was an operative, on behalf of source code-named Dewey, who may or may not have been known to, or even used by, the KGB." This highlights another of the book's problems, as the journalist pokes into the past, there's not a lot of meaning for the present and the stakes just don't seem that large relative to the effort being undertaken.
  
  Some elements of the book are based on real people and events, and of course, there is plenty of detail about the locations. However, neither exotic old-Europe cities, nor the cut and thrust of the retracing of the old spy network can make up for the fact that the hero is just kind of flat on the page. The author is trying to set up a kind of Hitchcockian everyman type (a la The Man Who Knew too Much), but it never really sparks, not even when he is reunited with his teenage flame. And while I appreciate the device of using classic espionage books -- a number of which I've read -- as part of the riddle, it feels more like the author amusing himself than something organic to the story. In the end, I can't really imagine anyone besides hardcore espionage fiction enthusiasts caring very much for this.
• 
  Philip Turner

  "The Double Game" by Dan Fesperman is a great read, the most enjoyable espionage novel I've read in years. It's also a veritable homage to spy fiction from decades past, with lines from earlier novels providing clues and plot points to the unfolding mystery. Terrific dialogue, characters, and suspense. Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta’s letter on the back cover of the galley is the truth: “For anyone who loves a good spy thriller–and who has loved them for years–this will be a treat.”
  
  Update: I finished reading "The Double Game" and the second half of the novel really paid off. It was terrific all the way through, with many surprises along the way and a satisfying ending. I highly recommend this book by Dan Fesperman, and now want to read more of his work.
  
• 
  Ed

  Thoroughly entertaining, highly readable modern spy novel with the unique twist that its winding plot involves the works of past spy fiction writers. So, if, like me, you haven't gotten around to reading that many spy novels, this one will introduce you to many of the genre's masters as well as delivering a fun narrative. There's not a lot of gore and blood, but the 53-year-old protagonist is a likeable PR flack from Washington, D.C. who you want to root for to come out successfully. There's a handy reading list at the end of spy novelists and their titles. Donald Hamilton's Matt Helms is included, and I have read his enjoyable fiction. Overall, I liked reading this one.
• 
  Cynthia

  Unlikely Spy
  
  Bill Cage has read all the espionage books. He grew up in Europe during the height of the cold war with his diplomat father so he’s not a foreigner to the concept of ‘tradecraft’ or the techniques of spying though he’s never seriously used them…..until now. After living in the States for most of his adult life he finds himself caught up in a return to Europe on a secret mission. He joins the chase partly for excitement, a little out of curiosity but mostly as a bid for redemption. As a young journalist he ‘sold out’ one of his writing idols who was also an old friend of his father. This might be his chance to assuage his guilt. Was his father involved with the CIA during the cold war? Was he merely a courier or was he a spy and more pressing did he use his young son, to run missions? In Europe Bill re-attaches to an old friend, visits some of his old haunts, and visits with his now retired father. As he chases from one clue to another things begin to heat up and become more dangerous. His mission isn’t a lark anymore.
  
  Bill’s personal spy adventure is interesting though not thrilling. In my opinion the best part of “Double Game’ is the bibliophile tie-in. Fesperman taunts his readers with clues taken from the pages of spy novels….literally. I felt queasy a few times knowing these clues were ripped from first editions! “Double Game” isn’t for the faint hearted bibliophile. It’s part of the charm of this book that readers are invited to use their spy lit knowledge as we follow our hero from one old world antiquarian bookshop to another. There’s even an extensive bibliography included in the back of the book. I can’t help wishing the adventure story had been more compelling however.
  
  This review is based on an e-galley supplied by the publisher.
  
• 
  Ms.pegasus

  THE DOUBLE GAME is a suspenseful spy novel literally torn from the pages of the masters of the genre, Eric Ambler, John LeCarré , Len Deighton and Adam Hall. The main character, Bill Page, is, like his father Warfield, an avid fan of the genre and a collector of first editions. Much of Bill's childhood was spent visiting antiquarian booksellers with his father, and running errands to and from the shops in the great European capitals, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade and Vienna. Bill's father was a career official with the State Department, and the family was posted to these cities as part of the diplomatic rotation which ended in Washington DC. The insider vantage point coupled with the genre's obvious attractions -- coded messages, duplicitous relationships, surreptitious meetings, shadowy couriers, secret networks and calculated gambles – make the allure of the genre irresistible to the adolescent Bill. He articulates that allure: “To be a spy was to survive by your wits in a dangerous foreign landscape, to seek to know everything about others while revealing nothing of yourself — an arrested adolescence in which you merited your country's highest trust even as you traded in its deepest duplicity.”
  
  The story opens in 1984. Bill is a correspondent with the Washington Post. He is stunned but exalted when reclusive, highly successful spy-novelist Edwin Lemaster, himself a former CIA operative and friend of Page père, grants him an interview. Over drinks, the interview drifts into informal territory: The gray area where fact (Lemaster's CIA experiences) and fiction (his novels) meet, as well as Lemaster's professional connection with Bill's father, who had always denied any kind of espionage involvement. Against his better judgement, Bill succumbs to the temptation to include some of these remarks in the article he writes.
  
  The scene jumps to 2010. The intervening 26 years have not been kind. Bill has lost his job at the Post, is divorced, and now working in his words as a mere P.R. flak. His only consolation is his college-student son, with whom he is trying to repair his relationship, and the interests he still shares with his father, who by now is retired and living in Vienna. The setting is Block Island. Bill and his father are attending the funeral of a former colleague who was once a deputy in the counter-intelligence unit. Understandably, the attendees include many old CIA hands, still holding old grudges and deep secrets. Bill relates: “I wandered awhile, intending to mingle. But these were careful people, and every conversation dropped in volume the moment I moved within range. After a while it became mildly amusing, like making the signal come and go on an old radio by touching the antenna.”
  
  Then, everything changes. He receives an anonymous note typed from his own typewriter on his own stationery – a reprise of an incident in John Bingham's FRAGMENT OF FEAR. The note itself refers to a Somerset Maugham hero, Ashenden, and offers a clue to a drop spot. The note hints at a a trail which will provide proof that Lemaster was a double agent -- that this was not merely a fantasy voiced by Lemaster in the 1984 interview. Bill's spirit is ignited: “I was transformed. Seated there, with full heart and empty glass, I was no longer just a lonely PR man with a big paycheck and a spent imagination. I was Folly, I was Smiley, I was page one of a fresh new first edition. I was the boy I had once been, and the man I had never become.”
  
  What ensues is a literary scavenger hunt. Clues culled from other spy novels lead to fresh instructions, and travel to the European cities of Bill's past. He encounters a friend from his adolescence, Litzi, who joins him on this hunt that by now has become laced with danger, and has excited both concern and guarded participation from his father.
  
  Even for a reader unacquainted with the many spy novels referenced in this convoluted suspense-mystery, the writing and many plot twist cannot fail to rivet the reader's attention. One of the most colorful characters Festerman introduces is a former CIA researcher named Val Humphries. She's shrewd, blunt, perceptive and discreet. The dialogue he create for her make this section one of the most memorable encounters in the book.
  
  Festerman also establishes a clear identity for the European antiquarian booksellers that play such a prominent role in the story. They often dealt in banned books in government controlled countries. With their low profile and private ownership, they evaded official scrutiny. They attracted both embassy types who were immune to any book-buying restrictions and wanted information as much as reading material, and less respectable, even conspiratorial elements.
  
  In addition to an engrossing plot and a sympathetic character, this book also arouses a certain nostalgia for the spy thrillers of the past. Definitely worthwhile reading.
  
• 
  Aaron Cooley

  A lifelong fan of spy novels is led through Europe by a series of clues pulled right from the pages of his favorite books in Dan Fesperman's THE DOUBLE GAME. If someone left you a riddle written on a page torn from your favorite book, would you drop everything and jet off to Europe? If your answer is a chuckle and a 'No,' then you probably won't make it past the first 50 pages of THE DOUBLE GAME. I applaud the author's intent, but the result is a contrived, laughable exercise that seems to posit the greatest spies of the Cold War were really book nerds who routinely spent thousands on first editions and memorized whole passages. And if that wasn't enough, the sheer volume of characters and red herrings Fesperman tries to insinuate into his plot left me more and more lost each time I picked up the book -- and I read it in less than a week. If you'd like to spend your next read on a spy novel, I would recommend examining Fesperman's impressive timeline of spy literature in his Appendices and picking up any one work from that list instead of spending your valuable time on THE DOUBLE GAME.
• 
  Mike

  I'd have to agree with previous reviews in that I didn't really care for the lead character, Bill Cage and the story was *extremely* contrived.
  
  The ease in which Cage spots and unravels clues, and how his memories for key sentences from novels are conjured up at the most opportune moments, was way more Maxwell Smart than George Smiley.
  
  I lost count of how many times miraculous coincidences helped the plot labor along. It was exhausting for me to stay interested in any jam Cage got into because his ability to figure out how to get out of it was already predetermined. In the last ten pages alone, Cage has a gun pointed at him twice, but both times a horribly concocted scenario emerges so he can escape. First he's saved because Cabot, who created this wild goose chase, apparently decides that killing him would be too easy (oh, even though he is apparently one breath away from dying right then and there, Cabot orders Anderson to leave him and Cage alone - um, so Cabot did it all so that the two of them could have a chat?). Then Cage is saved because, while Preston is waiting for Cage to make up his mind about how he'd like to be murdered (that's very sporting of him!), Cage's son, who has vanished for about 300 pages, decides that his dad wanted him to notice a single line from the novel he was reading. Cage's son then boards a plane, gets a room at his dad's hotel, and then calls the police to report a robbery at the hotel (now that's luck!).
  
  However, my biggest criticism has to be the speed in which Cage evolves from being just a middle aged fan of spy novels (in fact, he is so inept he even blurts out code words in public) to suddenly standing toe to toe with the CIA during an, albeit random, interrogation. I suppose his superhuman ability to recite passages from spy novels has turned him into this keen operative within a few weeks...even though he mentions several times that he read all of these novels as a kid (a late bloomer!).
  
  I don't want to pile it on, but I also don't understand what the revelation about his father had to do with anything. I knew nothing about this character so it wasn't a shock for me to read this "twist". Also, why does the novel wrap up with the narrator telling us he is now going to write a spy novel? So who was Cage writing to this whole time? What am I reading? It's a book within a book, but that closing paragraph came across as an awkward way to end it.
  
  Overall, I almost gave up on the novel several times and struggled to complete it. I see other reviews that praise the story and the writing, but it didn't appeal to me whatsoever. In fact, near the end of the novel, Cage thinks, "Then I slept soundly; ready to finish the job once and for all." Although I still don't quite understand why he even got interested in the job (I think the author unsuccessfully tries to explain this away by saying Cage wanted to live out a spy novel - kind of like fantasy baseball camp with the possibility of getting killed and getting little reward in return), I thought, I wish you had said this about a hundred pages ago!
  
  Based entirely on the multitude of references to other writers, there would be a slim chance that I'd recommend it to fans of other spy novels.
  
  
  
• 
  James

  Befuddling in its complexity but superb if only for its bibliography. 200+ espionage titles there for the finding. (The list is organized chronologically and by author. The former is excellent if you seek Cold War espionage without 21st century Islamophobism.)
• 
  Lynn Horton

  I'd give Fesperman's The Double Game 4.5 stars if I could. I seriously enjoyed this clever book and found myself smiling when I thought about it during the day, looking forward to picking it up again in the evening.
  
  Using classic spy literature, the author constructs a well-woven thriller from a first-person perspective. The non-spy, who's recruited in a most unusual way, shares much about famous literary spies and real-life CIA operatives. Plus, the settings for this book intrigue me; I've been to Prague and Budapest and Vienna, and Fesperman does a fine jobs of depicting their evocative charms. Supporting characters are unique enough to be memorable, and the author does a good job of crafting them.
  
  If you're looking for a thriller that doesn't bog down in the macabre, the gory, or the hyper-serious, The Double Game might be for you. Plus, the concept is just so darned clever that it's worth a read.
• 
  Speesh

  The (three now) books I’ve read by Dan Fesperman (The Arms Maker of Berlin, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows) have been excellent and this is no different. If you want to read how this sort of thing is done, read this. Or one of the others.
  
  I’m thinking there’s a general feeling around right now, that spies and spying is/are back. In literary circles as well as real life. With the US President hopefuls and hangers on determined to glorify in their own stupidity (that’s not really relevant, I just put it in because they’re all dip-shits - you know it), and with dumb fuck Putin determined to show us the size of his wanger and recreate the tensions of the Cold War, there’s never been a better time to be a spy in reality, or a better one to be a reader, or re-reader, of spy novels. I think it’s a reaction to the high tech life we have now. Where you have in your pocket, a computer powerful enough that George Smiley would have believed needed a whole floor of The Circus to house. A reaction, as in you look (longingly) back to a time when it was a lot more simple, this spying game. They were over there, we were over here. The technology of spying was a piece of chalk and a drawing pin or two and you had to use your brain (remember them?) to figure out and analyse what the other lot were up to. This book is in many ways, a homage to all that. Especially as the main man’s father is a collector of all the classic spy authors and has passed on his love of the genre and book collecting in general, to his son.
  
  I think most spy novel lovers - certainly the authors do - miss the Cold War. So, I suppose one point of interest, for the aficionado anyway, will be trying to work out how much of it is true. And/or, who the ‘fictional’ characters are based on. The question that occurred to me under way, was how much of a book written by an ex-CIA/MI6 operative IS fiction? Stella Rimmington’s books sprang to mind. I haven’t read any as yet, though I imagine her books need to go through some sort of ‘fact cleaning' process before publication, but even so, when the maxim is always to write about what you know, there HAS to be a fair amount of stuff that someone somewhere will recognise. But I digress.
  
  It becomes a trip down memory lane for the characters and the reader. Down the dimly-lit back alleys and streets of Cold War Eastern Europe. Back in time to chalk marks, dead letter drops and losing your followers by doubling back, rather than just taking the battery out of your mobile phone. For lovers of good, old-fashioned spy novels (as clearly was the intention), the pre-fall of the Berlin Wall versions that is, like me, it is a hypnotic trip in a time machine to Cold War hog-heaven. In parts bitter sweet, others enveloping, always somehow reassuring - I read it so quickly I didn’t have time to take notes. I had to write down my impressions when I was done. This is they.
  
  The main character’s naivety is believable, he was a child at the original time and is only now awakening to see what his past really was. He, as we discover more about his father with each chapter, and all the time knowing he must be holding something back. The way this is done, reminded me of Natchez Burning and The Bone Tree (and interestingly, both fathers are called ‘Cage.’ His lost love, Litzi is also very believable. Long love’s gone, I can tell by the way that you carry on… as Todd Rundgren once said. Perhaps the weakest link (the only weak link, on reflection) is the man behind it all’s motivation for doing it like this. His given reason is logical enough, however, compared to the complexity of much of the rest, it is weak. And although he professes it to have been easy (to set up) “just a few phone calls” it’s both hard to see how it could have been and how he - even with help - could have done it. Physically. You’ll see.
  
  As The Gin Blossoms put it the past is gone but something might be found to take its place.
  
  All my reviews, in one place. Apart from on here...
  Speesh Reads
• 
  Toni Osborne

  “The Double Game” is a thrilling old-school espionage novel with roots stemming from other authors works of art. The storyline is sprinkled with famous names such as John le Carre, William Buckley and many others. The plot is intellectual and action driven and mirrors what the layman perceives as the work of real spies such as the CIA during the Cold War Era. It plays on the idea that a best-selling novelist was actually a CIA agent deeply embedded with the KGB of the time. With skillfully developed characters and a plot containing many twists and turns the author has adeptly switched back and forth in years and maintained an elevated sense of suspense, a real guessing game till the very last page.
  
  Narrated in the first person by the protagonist, this smart and suspenseful story opens in 1984 with young journalist Bill Cage interviewing American espionage agent turned novelist Edwin Lemaster. His revelations will soon prove to be the catalyst and the end of Bill’s career.
  
  We jump in time to two decades later, when Bill is working in public relations spinning stories for his clients. One day out of the blue he receives an anonymous letter encouraging him to follow up on the 1984 allegations behind Lemaster’s disclosure. This enticing and strange note is full of cryptic references to some of Bill’s favourite spy novels and proves to be the first of many literary bread crumbs that eventually has Bill travelling to Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Deciphering each instruction is a maze of information, an adventure through spy novels that brings him closer to the truth…..
  
  This story develops and is presented in a different manner it quickly draws you into the world of espionage by bringing back memories and the adrenaline rush created by classic spy novels.
• 
  Jim Mullen

  This clever book is a giant wet kiss to the great spy novels of the Cold War by John Le Carré, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett and Desmond Cory. Our middle-aged anti-hero, Bill Cage, grew up in string of European capitals as the young son of a American mid-level career diplomat during the 60s and though once a reporter he now makes a good, but boring, living in PR. Now, in 2010 following some mysterious clues, he revisits his childhood hangouts and slowly realizes that his father was more than he seemed, maybe even a double agent, and that he even used his unaware son to pass secrets to an ever-widening ring of spies. Amusingly self-reverential, the secrets are usually passed in historic spy novels, usually in dusty, back-alley book stores. It never addresses the inherent silliness of the Cold War -- what big secrets were the spies after? Gee, can we find out the “secret” of where all the Russian toilet paper went? Can we find out “secret” of their empty department stores? It’s like the secret of writing a great spy novel. Knowing it doesn’t mean you can do it.
• 
  Isabelle

  I do like the idea of the book itself because it is a book lover's delight... It is a spy novel for spy novel lovers, and our unwilling hero, who grew up on spy novels, finds himself sucked into a dangerous odyssey simply because of the books he loved. That, I liked!
  I also liked the layers of secrets, some of them pertaining to the people closest to him, he is finally able to see through. I would have liked to have been afforded some time to understand why our hero has been so blind up to this point. He certainly is self-absorbed, but can it be the only reason why he has to be "handled" towards adulthood at 50?
  Regardless, the book seemed awkward to me somehow... too ambitious maybe? I am thinking of Le Carre's work in comparison, and so much seems to be missing: depth of character, tragic flaws that are deeply hidden, incredibly literary style etc...
• 
  Jamie Neve

  Overall I found this to be an engrossing book. It took a while to really grab me but the plot moved along well and the references to other spy thrillers made for a fun idea. Having the main character as a 50-something man made a nice change from the usual younger men who are able to muscle their way out of incidents or are experts with an array of weaponry. On the odd occasion, and I can only think of one right now, that he has to take direct action he is genuinely surprised he managed it. The character's relationship with an old flame is well handled and is left nicely open at the end. There's a good 'subplot' of the relationships between the main character and his father and his own son.
  
  One criticism might be that the book moves at a relatively slow pace and there are few dramatic moments. The tension comes through the main character's perception of being followed or watched rather than being physically threatened. I've not read a Dan Fesperman novel before so it might be that this is his trademark style. In some ways it is a refreshingly old-fashioned type of thriller. Give it a try and stick with it if your attention falters.
• 
  Bonnie

  This was a sort of homage to Cold War spy novels. The hero, who had been brought up in various European capitals by a father in the State Department, is sent on a sort of spy mission by a mysterious handler whose messages to him are oblique passages cut from Cold War spy novels that he and his father had read and collected. He isn't sure exactly what the mission is. This reader (and probably most others) felt as confused as the hero does on his quest. I was relieved that there is a comprehensible resolution to it. The characters are interesting and there is a sort of bibliography at the end of the novels mentioned in the book.
• 
  Michelle Ule

  An unusual book choice for me--a spy novel. I don't think I've read one in a generation.
  
  But this is more than a spy novel, it a spy novel about spy novels and includes a dazzling array of references to books of the past, only a few of which I'd read.
  
  Still, it kept me turning the pages--in part because Fesperman describes European cities I've recently visited in a deep knowing way. I'm glad he agreed with my point that Prague looks completely different in 2018 than it did when we both first visited in 1976!
  
  It's a big book, takes a while to read but I enjoyed it--even if I was lost half the time!
• 
  wally

  finished this afternoon of the 22nd of february 2020 good read fours stars really liked it kindle library loaner, has a long long list of "spy" stories, i'd been highlighting them as they were mentioned throughout but there is a list provided two ways, by date second and by...something...author, first, a plus. will look for some more from fesperman...and...considering the list, i'd have to look to be sure but there is at least one off the top of my hat that is not on the list...if there i'll come back and change this, so, grain of salt, but still...a list. could be to do with "fiction" versus "non-fiction"
• 
  Jim Loter

  A serviceable espionage novel with the twist that an amateur is sent on a wild goose through Eastern Europe with clues and orders derived from his favorite old spy novels. His mission is seemingly to discover if a respected former CIA agent and author had been a double agent during the Cold War. The book is great fun for fans of the genre because of its many references and extensive bibliography, but suffers from an uncompelling protagonist, long stretches of expository dialog, and implausible coincidences and discoveries.
• 
  Sue

  I always enjoy a well done tale of international intrigue...this one has it all. Bill Cage, a middle-aged, washed up journalist is drawn into a romp across Europe. The really intriguing part was all the spydom literary skullduggery as unseen handlers use Bill's love of spy novels and his youth spent as a Foreign Service officers son in Eastern Europe. Curiosity turns to worry turns to a run for his life. Not sure who to trust...his old girlfriend? His father? His handler? Great story....and many more spy novels presented for me to read.
• 
  Jennifer Bowers

  I used to devour the Cold War spy novels of LeCarre, MacInnes and others. The spy genre just hasn't been the same since The Wall fell! This is the story of such an enthusiast in the 21st c. who is caught up in a game modeled after scenes from all his favorite books. He visits haunts familiar to all such readers, like Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin. But when people start dying, he realizes it's not a game, it's real life!
• 
  Stacy

  I enjoy spy novels and this one was ok. The premise was good but the story became a very drug out affair for me. I did have an issue with keeping up with which character he was talking to or about at times. There was a lot of information to remember and keep straight. As far as knowing his spy novels, Dan Fesperman is expert level and I really did like the idea of a hunt based on quotes and passages of books. I wrote down the list of books referenced for further reading.