A Spy in Exile

Jonathan de Shalit has followed up his first thriller, Traitor, with a new suspense novel continuing the life of Ya'ara Stein after she is forced out of the Mossad.  Building on the intrigue and secretiveness in the life of a spy we continue to learn more about Ya'ara and her missions.

This time Ya'ara has decided to go back to a normal everyday existence as a film student when she is called back for a secret mission.  Just as she is working to settle into a normal routine and accept that her life as a Mossad agent was not meant to be, the Prime Minister calls her into his office to make her an offer she does not want to refuse.  He is offering her a classified position.  No one can know who she is working for.  She will be given assignments that are deadly, dangerous and highly controversial.  She may have to work without a safety net and also not tell anyone who she is answering to.  But she is in charge and hires six recruits who she will train and they will work with her on assignments.  Tripping back and forth between 1945 and current day, we follow Ya'ara and meet some of the men in her life.  They are there to help her, sooth her when she is upset, but she does not get too close to anyone.  There is a distance she keeps that protects her from her hidden emotions that are hinted at once in a while.  She can be a cold hearted killer, and a calculating agent who is out to make sure her enemies get what she has determined they deserve.

An added interesting aspect of the story is that even though it mainly takes place in Israel and Germany, there is a chapter about Ya'ara coming to Lincoln, New Hampshire.  She has flown to the United States and is walking the Appalachian Trail.  Up from the South she walks and enters New Hampshire.  She thinks, "The northern states through which the trail passed, Vermont and New Hampshire, seemed friendlier.  She knew that could change in an instant, but she was surrounded by warmth and serenity, and she gave in to that warmth, wrapped herself in it."  After hiking for many kilometers, she reached Lincoln where a gas station attendant recommended a restaurant.  "...the Gypsy Cafe.  She found it easily. It was hard not to spot its storefront, which was painted a deep blue and decorated with myriad other colors, too. ..The menu was awfully eclectic. Food from a wide variety of places around the world., one dish per country."

So much added fun when you read about somewhere you know in a book.  Otherwise this was a hard book for me to connect with.  Thriller fiction is not a genre I usually read.  This was not hard to follow or too violent, but I did not get attached to the characters and as a reader you did not really become connected to the story or backstory enough to agree with Ya'ara's need to kill the people she targeted.