Christopher Marlowe Cobb, an American abroad in 1915, is the resourceful hero of Robert Olen Butler’s Paris in the Dark. The alienated son of a famous stage actress, Cobb plays several roles in his life. As 'Kit' Cobb, he’s a foreign correspondent for a Chicago newspaper. But as Josef Wilhelm Jäger—and sometimes Joseph Hunter—he disguises himself as a writer for a syndicate of American German-language publications. Why the need to blur his identity? Because he’s also a secret agent working for the United States government ... One of the pleasures of Mr. Butler’s series lies in how the author brings an earlier era to such convincing life through details, attitudes and reactions at once realistic and surprising. Paris in the Dark, with its ironic twists.
Paris in the Dark is Butler’s 17th novel; he’s also published six short fiction collections, one of which, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain, received the Pulitzer Prize ... Those credentials show in the novel’s well-crafted prose and Kit’s convincing voice, which ranges from tough-guy to lyrical. Butler doesn’t just bring literary cred to his spy novels, though. Like Cobb, the author grew up in the theater—his father was an actor and theater professor—and, even more saliently, he served in the Army Military Intelligence Corps during the Vietnam War. All that adds depth and authenticity to Cobb’s character—not to mention fallibility. Butler lets us see him constructing characters to play and analyzing the motives and goals of the people he deals with. Cobb is no invincible James Bond; he makes mistakes, sometimes serious ones. Much of the novel’s pleasure comes from Butler’s smart details about how different spycraft was a century ago ... In short, Cobb has to rely mainly on his wits. Fortunately, he has a robust supply, and following him through (and under) the streets of Paris is a satisfying, stylish thrill.
We are thrown into the war in Paris as Zeppelins hunt for targets and biplanes defend the city. And not long after we meet newsman 'Kit' Cobb, an explosion rocks a nearby café. The war has come to Paris, and he is soon called upon by his handler, James Polk Trask, to end his retirement as a spy and hunt the German terrorists who have infiltrated the City of Light ... Butler, is very good at evoking the tension of the time for Americans, who were eager to help France in return for their gift of the Statue of Liberty and their assistance during our Revolution 150 years earlier. The volunteers carry gangrenous bodies out of the trenches and feel a twinge of shame that their government isn’t as game to join the fight ... I wonder what Cobb will get up to next? I’m glad I can see what he’s been up to beforehand while I wait.
Butler’s story occasionally seems too dependent on coincidence and chance encounters to ring true, but this is a thriller of great depth and intelligence.
Butler returns to his outstanding historical-mystery series starring Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe Cobb with WWI in full swing, though still without the participation of the U.S. An American spy posing as a journalist, Cobb is in Paris, ostensibly writing about American ambulance drivers but actually tracking German agents. When hand-set bombs begin exploding in Paris, it’s clear that the espionage threat has intensified dramatically. But is it German agents setting the bombs or some form of homegrown terrorist? ... Beneath the frame story, this is a surprisingly introspective and quite moving novel about love and war.
James Polk Trask, the head of the American Secret Service, thinks Kit would be the perfect candidate to infiltrate the ranks of recent German immigrants who may secretly be saboteurs. It’s hard to share his confidence, since the first person Kit suspects of heading the saboteurs is vindicated in a spectacularly abrupt way, and his second suspect disappears while Kit is supposed to be keeping an eye on him. Luckily for Kit, he’s far more successful at romancing Louise Pickering, a New England–born nurse who’s just as wary of strangers as he is and just as susceptible to high-flown sentiments. As for the rest, readers who don’t know how World War I turned out will find no spoilers and precious little espionage. Paris isn’t the only thing in the dark here.
In Butler’s flawed fifth outing for Christopher 'Kit' Cobb, the Chicago newspaperman who doubles as an American spy, investigates a series of seemingly random bombings in Paris in the autumn of 1915 ... Though Butler effectively captures the social flavor and visuals of WWI-era Paris, thriller readers accustomed to logic and procedure will be frustrated. Kit, for instance, never visits the scene of a bombing or interviews witnesses, and the finale takes place in that old chestnut, the Catacombs, where the bombers have inexplicably holed up to build their next explosive device. Series fans who don’t mind melodrama and the sometimes lead-footed tempo will be satisfied.
