A wickedly entertaining espionage mystery with a dark psychological edge.
In the third installment of Sproule’s Thorne Quartet, a vanished spymaster sends a reluctant investigator down a trail of grudges, blood, and increasingly peculiar suspects. It’s 1960, and Matthew Thorne, a former Canadian Army intelligence officer, has retreated to Saint-Pierre when his friend, Inspector Boisvert, arrives with a problem. Monsieur Aristide, a formidable behind-the-scenes figure in French intelligence, has disappeared from a Paris hotel. His suite contains a broken vase and traces of blood; a reproduction of Cézanne’s The Hanged Man’s House is missing. Thorne takes the case, following clues through Paris, Malta, Casablanca, and rural Brittany.
Sproule has a knack for putting alarming people in entertaining rooms. Thorne, who narrates with a dry eye and a frequently troubled conscience, is no unflappable secret agent. He is clever enough to recognise a trap but not always detached enough to avoid one. His encounters with killers and schemers become tests of his own judgement, especially when sympathy proves harder to suppress than suspicion. Boisvert, meanwhile, is a splendid foil: fond of cognac, impatient with solemnity, and ready with a joke when Thorne would rather brood. Their banter gives this dark business a welcome comic pulse.
The missing Aristide dominates the book long before he appears. Fastidious, powerful, and adept at manipulating others, he has cultivated enemies who seem unable to leave him alone. Chief among them is Antoine Malraux, a dangerous former operative whose feud with Aristide is more intimate than a straightforward quest for revenge. Sproule is particularly adept at exposing the humiliations and hunger for approval beneath these men’s grand displays of menace. Cézanne’s painting, initially just a curious clue, grows into a disquieting emblem of Aristide’s fixation.
The novel moves at an unhurried pace, lingering over conversations, tangled histories, and Thorne’s speculations about the people pursuing him. Some exchanges run longer than the suspense requires, but the detours also establish the book’s odd, companionable rhythm. Its pleasures are specific: Paris cafés, Maltese hideaways, Brittany’s ancient standing stones, abrupt violence, and moments of almost farcical absurdity amid genuine danger.
For all the tradecraft and double-crosses, Sproule is most interested in what people demand from one another: loyalty, forgiveness, admiration, or simply proof that they matter. Thorne’s own divided affections keep him from standing safely outside that question. Readers drawn to the moral ambiguities of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the psychological complexities of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley will find much to appreciate in Sproule’s distinctly eccentric, darkly humorous take on espionage.
A first-rate psychological thriller.
***
Pub date July 6, 2026
FriesenPress
ISBN 978-1038370754
Price $40.99 Hardcover, $23.99 Paperback, $4.99 Kindle edition
