Supernotes

November 16, 2015
In this confusing based-on-a-true-story thriller from Kasper, a former operative of the Italian intelligence services and the CIA, and Italian journalist Carletti, a man with the code name Kasper—“secret agent, spy, double-oh-seven, agent provocateur, imposter”—finds himself detained at the Prey Sar Correctional Center near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2009. For the prisoner, “Prey Sar is the place of no return.” Kasper has been investigating the supernotes of the title: “counterfeit U.S. bank notes, hundred-dollar bills, very high quality, practically perfect.” He has clearly rubbed someone the wrong way to end up in Prey Sar, though he does have allies on the outside. In Rome, lawyer Barbara Belli is working on his release and learning of Kasper’s shadowy past. The book provides a fascinating peek behind the curtain of today’s global intelligence community, but the back-and-forth narrative essentially destroys the story’s momentum. Agent: Alan Nevins, Renaissance Literary and Talent.

October 15, 2015
A based-on-fact thriller about escaping from captivity in a Cambodian hellhole. The CIA-connected Italian agent code-named Kasper sits in Prey Sar, a Cambodian prison, because he's been investigating the widespread use of "supernotes." These are counterfeit $100 bills, printed in Asia, which are virtually perfect. There is an enormous quantity of supernotes in circulation, and they are the "currency of choice for opium, heroin, and much else." Kasper is badly beaten by rubber-coated pipes and is hardly able to stand, so "his only battle is to stay alive." In an attempt to gain his release, his family hires Roman attorney Barbara Belli, who realizes "her client had not been arrested; he'd been kidnapped." Kasper's ailing mother sends virtually all of her money for bribes to gain his release or at least to keep him alive. (Such a shame she couldn't just use supernotes.) Italian diplomats join in the effort to help him, but Belli learns Kasper isn't the kind of person who inspires crusades in his defense. Luckily, one Cambodian guard is a decent man who brings Kasper medicine and clean water. After more than a year in captivity, he plans a bold escape--but nothing is simple. The final resolution feels anticlimactic after events that include waterboarding, scheming, and a brutal fight with a cellmate. But none of this deters the 50-year-old Kasper, who has been "in a constant bath of foaming adrenaline" for 30 years. A friend advises Kasper that the "will to power" can get him killed, that he must be careful with the people closest to him, and that "what you buy with supernotes is a ticket to hell." This translation from Italian is a fast, exciting read inspired by a real agent who risked his life combatting the problem of counterfeiting on an international scale.

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December 1, 2015
This is the fictionalized story of Agent Kasper, an undercover Italian intelligence agent who also worked for the CIA. The plot concerns Kasper's investigation of perfect counterfeit U.S. $100 bills said to be circulating in Asia. It begins in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Kasper and his CIA buddy Clancy run a louche bar. After being warned to leave Cambodia, the pair is captured at the Thai border. Kasper is imprisoned in a former Khmer Rouge concentration camp where he is tortured, starved, and hooked on psychoactive drugs. Back in Rome, attorney Barbara Belli is making little progress in getting the government to help their spy, but she encounters people who speculate about the counterfeit, called supernotes, and even question whether a perfect counterfeit bill is actually counterfeit. Kasper's occasional visitors, an Honorary Italian consul and a guitar-playing Frenchman, also speculateabout the CIA producing the bills in North Korea, and the notion that $100,000 supernotes once bought cooperation from political strongmen, including Chiang Kai-Shek and Saddam Hussein. The main appeal here is the tantalizing premise, also explored in Roger Hobbs' recent Vanishing Games (2015).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)