Mission Impossible meets Berlin Station. “Two Spies Reach out From the Grave” is that rarity, a boy’s own adventure with a super spy, implanted earpiece giving him a window into the world, combined with modern-day geopolitical intrigue and treachery. Nathan Adamson careens around the world, sent in on impossible assignments in impossible places, while a very old (actually very, very old) ex-French Resistance spy, Nathan’s friend, unearths secrets from the past. Chad Huskins writes in a clipped yet fulsome, “right there in the middle” first-person style that works brilliantly, with no friction at all between one place and the next, and the fight or flight scenes are kinetic. Characterisation is surprisingly deep for such a novel. I loved the varied locales lit by a torchlight of battlefield intrigue and the author’s knowledge of the arcane world of the modern spy seems amazingly complete. There is a sense in which the plot grows absurd, but as with the MI franchise, you go with the flow, just to follow our hero and heroine to the double-crossing end. A vibrant new entry into a genre mostly full of forgettable heroes and battles.
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