Set in the dark world of international espionage, from London to Mallorca, Croatia, Paris, and Cap Ferret: the gripping and suspenseful story of a young woman who unwittingly becomes a perfect asset in the long overdue finale of a covert special op
The young English narrator of Lea Carpenter’s dazzling new novel has grown up unhappily in London, dreaming of escape, pretending to be someone else and obsessed with a locked private garden. On the eve of her twenty-first birthday, at a party near that garden, she meets its charismatic and mysterious new owner, Marcus, thirty-three years older, who sweeps her off her feet. Before long they are married at his finca in Mallorca, and at last she has escaped into a new role – but at what price? On their honeymoon in Croatia, Marcus reveals there is something she can do for him—a plan is in place and she can help with “a favor.”
This turns out to be posing as an art advisor to a family on Cap Ferret, where Marcus asks her to simply “listen.” A helicopter deposits her at a remote, highly guarded and lavishly appointed compound on a spit of land in the Atlantic. It’s presided over by an enigmatic, charming patriarch Edouard, along with his wife Dasha, children Nikki and Felix, and populated by a revolving cast of other guests—some suspicious, some intriguing, perhaps none, like her, what they seem.
Brilliantly compelling, this is a spellbinding and unexpectedly poignant story of a long- planned, high-stakes CIA-Mossad operation that only needed the right asset to complete.
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Carpenter’s unnamed narrator is the perfect pawn in a game of revenge and, perhaps, atonement set in the rarefied worlds of a private London garden, an isolated French retreat, Paris hotels, and at its core, a Beirut war zone.... Carpenter’s narrator is critical to the success of their plan and is thrust into a diabolically intricate web of spycraft with lethal and long-term results. Espionage thrillers are notably high octane, but Carpenter takes a refreshingly cerebral, literary, and cunningly cinematic approach in her exploration of personal moral ambiguity playing out in the world of international intrigue.
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Booklist, starred review“With its dreamily detached narration and elliptical feel, Carpenter’s third novel . . . is less interested in spy vs. spy . . . than the lack of reliable truths in people’s lives and the ways they allow themselves to be formed by events beyond their control. . . . An edgy confessional novel with the trappings of spy fiction.