The Double Game

A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster revealed to up-and-coming journalist Bill Cage that he’d once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a Foreign Service brat who grew up in the very cities where Lemaster’s books were set, the news story created a brief but embarrassing sensation and heralded the beginning of the end of his career in journalism.More than two decades later, Cage, now a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper into Lemaster’s pronouncement. Spiked with cryptic references to some of Cage’s favorite spy novels, the note is the first of many literary bread crumbs that lead him back to Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, each instruction drawing him closer to the complex truth, each giving rise to more questions: Why is beautiful Litzi Strauss back in his life after thirty years? How much of his father’s job involved the CIA? As the events of Lemaster’s past eerily—and dangerously—begin intersecting with those of Cage’s own, a “long stalemate of secrecy” may finally be coming to an end. A story about spies and their secrets, fathers and sons, lovers and fate, duplicity and loyalty, The Double Game ingeniously taps the espionage classics of the Cold War to build a spellbinding maze of intrigue. It is Dan Fesperman’s most audacious, suspenseful, and satisfying novel yet.From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, August 2012: The Double Game begins as a playful spy caper within a spy caper, in which clues to a mystery are found in the pages and plots of old spy novels. OK, clever enough. But the story quickly becomes more refreshingly and unexpectedly mysterious with each turn of the page, and I realized that Fesperman has achieved something remarkable here: He's turned the spy novel on its head while paying homage to the genre, at the same time giving us an unlikely protagonist who discovers that he's lived his entire life in a world “where fact and fiction were virtually indistinguishable.” --Neal ThompsonReview"'The Double Game is not just a spy novel - it's a love letter to the genre...cleverly woven into a thrilling story. Brilliantly executed and a joy from start to finish.' -Olen Steinhauer, author of An American Spy * 'A tantalizing, timely thriller' - Washington Post * 'A thought-provoking and exciting read' - Observer * 'One of the best writers of intelligent thrillers based on contemporary events working today...observant, thoughtful, witty' - Baltimore Sun * 'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event... an utterly compelling thriller and quite simply the best I've read all year.' - Sunday Telegraph * 'Fesperman is the closest thing America has to John le Carre, a writer of great elegance and sophistication whose novels are as topical as they are compelling.' - Bookseller"