The Girl in Berlin

British author Wilson masterfully uses misdirection and distraction in this clever tale of espionage and morality, a marked improvement over her two earlier post-WWII novels, The Twilight Hour and War Damage. In 1951, as Britain reacts in shock to the disappearance of suspected Soviet moles Burgess and Maclean, disgraced Communist Party member Colin Harris returns to London from his sojourn in East Berlin, where his activities attracted the attention of the intelligence community. Meanwhile, Jack McGovern of Special Branch, a product of the left-wing working class, is recruited for a counter-intelligence operation: a hunt for a suspected mole that will drag him to East Berlin. There, McGovern will be lucky not to join the mounting list of murder victims. Grand themes of global conflict prove to be mere background for a myriad of personal agendas, as the innocent are sacrificed for expediency and the powerful kid themselves that their days of reckoning will never arrive. Agent: Faith Evans, Faith Evans Associates (U.K.). (Oct.)