The Matchmaker: A Spy in Berlin

LeCarre and Greene made me a fan of 'literary' spy fiction decades ago, and now Paul Vidich has arrived to assure me that the genre is alive and well, thank goodness. I was absolutely blown away by his first four novels, and now there's another, THE MATCHMAKER: A SPY IN BERLIN, which is just so damn good I couldn't put it down. Had to finish it this morning with my coffee before heading off to my monthly "stick-a-needle-in-my-eye" appointment with a retinal specialist. And I did.

The setting this time is Berlin in 1989, and the fall of the Wall is, of course, woven deftly into the fabric of the story, which gives us some new characters. Dick Winslow is a senior CIA agent, who's had some past differences with George Mueller (who has had a show more role in all four previous novels), now Deputy Director at Langley. Winslow is in pursuit of a shadowy East German Stasi operative known as "the Matchmaker," who runs a stable of "Romeos" and matches them up with vulnerable women who have access to valuable western intelligence.

Anne Simpson is one of the Matchmaker's victims, recently divorced and lonely, and a translator for JROC (Joint Refugee Operations Center), she meets a charming stranger and they marry. Two years later her new husband turns up 'missing.' She learns this from Jim Cooper, another CIA agent, who becomes her 'handler.' Missing quickly becomes murder, which then becomes a manhunt, as Anne is unwillingly drawn deeper into an increasingly dangerous situation. Like it or not, she soon becomes "the woman they wanted her to become - a recruit in their spy game."
Increasingly distrustful of the men she is working with, she disdains Winslow's explanation that what they are doing "will make the world safer." In response he tells her -

"Your view of the world isn't the world I live in. Deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers."

Vidich puts the reader right in the thick of things as cracks appear in East Berlin"s Communist system, protests escalate, Soviet tanks roll in, and the winds of change are felt. He even uses that phrase, and I wondered if, like me, he was thinking of that song by the German metal band, the Scorpions. In any case, his characters join that crowd who climb the Wall to freedom. And there is a violent conclusion here too that will simply spin your head around. Anne Simpson becomes a force to reckon with, and I was left wondering if she might show up in a future Vidich thriller. I hope so.

I loved this book. Keep 'em coming, Mr Vidich. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

Good historical fiction about the situation in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down and East Germany collapsed. The story is told around an American woman who marries an East German man, who is later exposed as a spy for the communist government. It's difficult to see this as a "spy" story, it's more of a story of a failed/fake romance. There's a few tense moments, but little of the suspense typically found in a spy thriller.

I liked the story line but I could not empathize nor like the characters,

I found this very dull.

> She had learned Berlin’s idiosyncratic system long ago. Numbers went up one side of the street and then continued in sequence back down, so #2 of such and such building was opposite #92. The confusing system, she thought, was the only thing the divided city shared

I haven't read a spy novel in a long time. This was fun.

DNF