The Star of Istanbul: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller
*Starred Review* When we last saw Christopher Marlowe (“Kit”) Cobb, war correspondent, secret agent, and all-around soldier of fortune, he was in civil-war-torn Mexico, cavorting with Pancho Villa (The Hot Country, 2012). Now, in 1915, with WWI raging, and the neutral U.S. edging toward involvement, he’s aboard the doomed Lusitania, tracking a German American who may be a secret-service agent and falling under the spell of a famous actress, Selene Bourgani, who has secrets of her own. After the Lusitania meets its watery grave, Kit lands in London, where he continues to shadow the actress (well, not exactly: he’s fallen in love with her and does most of his “shadowing” in her bed). Meanwhile, there’s a German assassin out there somewhere called Der Wolf, whose eyes may be on both Selene and Kit. The Wolf’s trail leads to Istanbul, where Selene’s motives gradually become clear and where Kit lands in a blood-soaked finale. Butler juggles a lot of elements here, in terms of both plotting, as double and triple crosses merge like lanes in a traffic roundabout, and tone, as the novel commingles character-driven historical fiction with melodrama and swashbuckling action. Somehow, though, it all works; on one level, Butler is playing with genre conventions in an almost mad-scientist manner, but at the same time, he holds the reader transfixed, like a kid at a Saturday matinee. --Bill Ott