Author Jack Laflin is a fine writer,
but he didn’t leave Belmont Books with an easy task to market this
series. In book one of the series, “The Spy Who Loved America”,
we meet a Soviet KGB undercover spy, Pyotr Grigorivitch Ilyushin, who
was training in Russia for a long-term undercover assignment in the
USA. He receives plastic surgery to alter his Slavic appearance and
attends a secret academy designed to teach undercover spies how to
act credibly American, a fun concept later co-opted by Nelson Demille
in his excellent novel, “The Charm School”.
(A few spoilers from the inessential
Book 1 of the series follow:)
Grigorivitch’s training worked too
well, and he began to think and act like an American. Pretty quickly
upon his arrival in the US, he is captured by the CIA and informed
that he’s fooling no one. The CIA convinces this Russian Spy Who
Loved America to change his name to Gregory Hiller and work as a CIA
spy. The novel ends rather abruptly thereafter.
Do you see the marketing problem here?
Technically, Book 1 of the 'Gregory
Hiller' series is “The Spy Who Loved America”, but the words
“Gregory Hiller” don’t appear until the last page of the book.
The knowledge that a Gregory Hiller series even exists kinda spoils
the ending of Book 1. It’s probably more helpful to conceptualize
“A Silent Kind of War” as 'Gregory Hiller' Book 1 and “The Spy
Who Loved America” as a prequel/origin story.
In any case, A Silent Kind of War (aka:
“Piotr Grigorivitch Ilyushin #2” or “Gregory Hiller #1”) is a
spy novel representing Hiller’s first mission as a CIA operative.
The job takes him to Hawaii with a mission to uncover a commie plot
to sew unrest into the fabric of the 50th state’s
newly-Americanized, yet very Oriental, culture. He poses as a writer
and tourist with directions to liaison with two well-connected CIA
operatives permanently stationed in Hawaii as points-of-contact.
Hiller is specifically chosen for this assignment because he knows
how the communist mind works.
The mystery of who is behind this plot
against Hawaii is quickly given some clarity when Hiller runs into a
freelance Hungarian spy he knew in his previous life. The last time
that Hiller (as Piotr) saw Anton Korzenyi, it was 1958 in East Berlin
when Korzenyi was using a mallet on the testicles of a would-be
defector to extract information. Korzenyi’s presence in Honolulu
lends a greater sense of urgency to Hiller’s mission since now both
democracy and testicles are now at stake.
The stakes rise when happenstance
brings Hiller into possession of an important object belonging to
Korzenyi that the Hungarian desperately wants returned. This cat and
mouse game drives the novel’s actions for the first hundred pages.
Along the way, Hiller meets and falls for a tourist girl whose safety
later becomes compromised by Hiller’s Cold War mission.
There are some very violent torture and
fight scenes in this short novel, and the sense of urgency to
Hiller’s mission is palpable. Another fun element is that this is
Hiller’s first assignment for the CIA, and he screws it up quite a
bit along the way. Good people die because of his inexperience and
ineptitude. This isn’t a normal spy novel starring a perfect
American superman. Hiller is vulnerable and very human.
Granted, the author deployed some lazy
narrative devices along the way including the trope of a villain who
takes the time to present a long monologue about his evil master plan
before attempting to kill the hero. The dialogue was fairly clunky at
times and could have benefited from a more critical editor. But at
159 pages, “A Silent Kind of War” is a quick and easy read - not
a masterpiece of the genre but a fun diversion for espionage fiction
fans.
