If you love political thrillers and spy novels, you must read The Night Agent. From the captivating opening chapter, to agents and double agents, to the ins and outs of D.C. and world politics, you’ll race through Matthew Quirk’s fascinating book. You won’t be able to put it down and will be sorry once it’s over.
Quirk’s latest feels like he’s been churning out political thrillers for decades, hitting on a timely plot that starts out fast and only speeds up as the story unfolds. The characters, mainly Peter and Rose, are developed enough that readers will care about and relate to them, adding to the tension and suspense as their fate hangs in the balance throughout. While this novel is a standalone, it does signal a new direction for Quirk, a former journalist, and readers will no doubt hope he leaves the military and action thrillers behind for more politically relevant storylines like this one ... delivers the first high-stakes, nail-biting political thriller of 2019.
Uneven ... Quirk keeps the action moving at a cinematic clip. But Peter is too earnest by half, and those expecting nuance will be disappointed. Still, readers looking for a highly contemporary take on relations between the U.S. and Russia will be rewarded.
Though some of the spy stuff is so standard as to be silly, Quirk keeps things moving. But the spark and surprise of his past thrillers, such as Cold Barrel Zero (2016), are largely missing. And though Quirk has never drawn characters with much depth, the paper-thinness of Peter (who disdains the Hardy Boys but frequently seems to be emulating them) and Rose (one of whose main roles is to point out when Peter is bleeding) is disappointing ... Quirk goes for timeliness in imagining the Russians taking control of Washington, but while the book does resonate to a small degree with current events, reality beat fiction to such possibilities as our enemy owning a sitting U.S. president.
