Publisher's Weekly Review
Knecht's solid second novel (following The Relief Map) opens in 1966, when 25-year-old Vera Kelly is sent to Buenos Aires by the CIA to infiltrate a rumored KGB cell, gladly leaving behind her life in New York. Ever since a falling-out with her abusive mother as a teenager, Vera's life consists of her work at a radio station and her occasional discreet trips to underground lesbian bars in Greenwich Village. But in Buenos Aires, Vera learns to lead a spy's double life. Vera's observations of the politically charged city are straightforward and sharp: "Bars where students liked to go were nearly empty. Plainclothes police lounged conspicuously in the windows." As Vera consorts undercover with the radical students assumed to be in touch with the Soviets, a military coup and a personal betrayal threaten her work, leaving her with the new task of trying to make it out of Argentina alive. While Vera is a charming narrator, especially among the ranks of spy thriller leads, her work among the radicals is never as gripping as it should be, nor are the flashbacks following her trajectory from reckless teenager to CIA operative. Still, with some suspension of disbelief, this is a promising subversion of the classic espionage novel, one which would lend itself well to a sequel or series to come. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Who is Vera Kelly? A 25-year-old CIA spy living in Buenos Aires, that's who. It's 1966, and, at first, there is nothing terribly exciting about her covert-ops work until Argentina is riven by a coup, and she finds herself in terrible danger and desperate to get out of the country. In the meantime, the story has moved backward in time to 1957, when Vera is a teenager who has been declared incorrigible by the court and remanded to the Maryland Youth Center. After time served, she finishes high school and moves to New York. It is there that she is recruited to work for the CIA. The story continues to move back and forth in time, filling in Vera's backstory and her present life in Buenos Aires, where she masquerades as a college student, meeting two classmates who she thinks might be KGB agents. But are they? It's a tangled, atmospheric story that gradually builds suspense to a satisfyingly surprising denouement. Spy-fiction fans will want to take note.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A young undercover spy is forced to improvise after her handler goes dark during the Argentinian coup in 1966.In 1957, Vera Kelly is a suicidal teenage girl living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, struggling to come to terms with her sexuality; she's sent to juvenile detention after multiple conflicts with her mother. Less than a decade later, she's a 25-year-old CIA agent skilled in electronics, embedded in Buenos Aires during the Cold War. Going undercover as a Canadian student, Kelly befriends a group of young scholars suspected of being KGB agents; she surveils their activities during the day and spends her nights transcribing conversations from inside the Argentinian vice president's office, which is bugged. As the president's tentative grasp on power weakens, Vera makes plans to leave the country as soon as the army takes control of the government. The borders close more quickly than expected, however, and she's forced to go into hiding and hope her cover hasn't been blown. In this novel, a coming-of-age story meets spy thriller, Knecht (Relief Map, 2016) deftly explores how Vera's alienation from her mother and various romantic partners leads to her becoming a CIA recruit and how her self-confidence continues to be both challenged and reaffirmed in Argentina. Knecht's crisp prose moves swiftly as Vera tails suspects and also accommodates moments of increasing self-awareness: "As Gerry had said, if things went bad, I could be killed. And yet, in the place where my fear should have been, there was a blank space. I felt that I had been living for a long time in a place beyond fear, where my life was contingent and didn't amount to much anyway." Throughout the novel, Vera wonders who she will be should she survive this assignment, but even in her deep uncertainty, it's quite clear that she is already the character readers have been waiting for.A riveting, satisfying novel. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Who is the titular protagonist of Knecht's (Relief Map) second novel? In alternating chapters that weave between the past (the late 1950s) and the present (1966), we meet a young woman who struggles to define herself as she deals with a difficult, abusive mother, longs for the best friend from whom she has been separated, endures juvenile detention, furtively participates in the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village, and eventually becomes a CIA operative in Argentina at the height of the Cold War. In Buenos Aires, the solitary Vera proves to be a natural at the spy game as she sets out to infiltrate a group of student activists, but during a military coup, she finds herself trapped and must rely on her wits and guts to stay safe. In these suspenseful sections, Knecht shines in capturing the tense mood and fear of a city on edge as civilians hunker down and those targeted by the junta must hide. Yet even though Vera narrates this story, her flat, detached tone leaves the reader a bit disconnected. Who is Vera Kelly? At the end of the book, she remains a cipher to everyone but herself. Verdict More a literary coming-of-age tale than a full-blown espionage thriller, this will attract readers who appreciate good writing and a fascinating, if unknowable, lead character.-Wilda Williams, Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
