The Reluctant Matador

April 20, 2015
Near the start of Pryor’s intricately-plotted fifth Hugh Marston novel (after 2014’s The Button Man), Hugh, the security chief at the American embassy in Paris, is supposed to meet Amy Dreiss, the 19-year-old stepdaughter of an old friend, Bart Denum, at a restaurant for breakfast, but she fails to show. Amy came to Paris hoping for a modeling career, but Hugh later discovers that the missing teen was working at a strip club instead. Hugh and sidekick Tom Green follow Amy’s trail to Barcelona, where she traveled with a young man, Rubén Casteñada, who offered her a job there. When Hugh and Tom check out Casteñada’s Barcelona address, they find his body on the apartment floor—and a blood-drenched Bart, who protests his innocence. Extraneous characters and digressions on their habits and history lend a certain aura of coziness to this gory tale. Agent: Ann Collette, Rees Literary Agency.

April 1, 2015
The head of security at the U.S. Embassy in Paris explores Barcelona in search of a wannabe model. Hugo Marston (The Button Man, 2014, etc.) is looking forward to some pancakes and bacon with his friend Bart Denum's stepdaughter, Amy Dreiss, at Breakfast in America, Paris's trendy answer to IHOP. What he gets is stood up. No call, no text, no Amy. Worried, he checks Amy's Marais apartment, where a neighbor tells him to check the Club Caterina in Pigalle. Instead of modeling, Amy's stripping, and she's left the country with Ruben Castaneda, of Estruch Entertainment Enterprises, who's promised her a better job in Spain. So Hugo heads south with his best friend, Tom Green, a freelance, free-drinking CIA agent who just can't help pissing off the cops. Green has a pied-a-terre in Barcelona the CIA will let them use, and pretty soon the two of them find Castaneda's body on the floor of his apartment. Tom does his best to annoy the local police by dragging his gun into the station, but Chief Inspector Bartoli Garcia, an old friend of Hugo's, gives the American the Spanish equivalent of carte blanche to run the investigation. Focusing on Castaneda's colleagues-smart Nisha Bhandari, aristocratic Leo Baresetti, and geeky Todd Finch-Hugo tries to connect the dots between Estruch and Los Matadores, a shadowy prison gang that may be responsible for the bull's head drawn in blood over Castaneda's body. But when a second corpse appears, he fears that time may be running out for Amy. Pryor lays it on thick: Hugo and Tom act out with frat-boy glee, the Rioja flows, and the Spanish authorities assign only English-speaking detectives for the convenience of their American chums. Strictly for those who think espionage is like Club Med without the beads.

May 15, 2015
In the fifth Hugo Marston espionage novel, Marston follows a trail that represents the downward slope of a young woman's ambitions. Marston, a former FBI agent and currently the security chief at the American embassy in Paris, embarks on an unofficial investigation for an old friend and colleague, Bart Denum, whose daughter, Amy, has moved to Paris from the U.S., seeking a career as a fashion model. And now she's gone missing. Marston, accompanied by his barely functioning but sometimes brilliant alcoholic sidekick, former CIA agent Tom Green, discovers that Amy recently worked as a stripper in a Pigalle club and that she took off to Barcelona with a man who promised her legitimate modeling work. Amy's betrayer is discovered, murdered, with a surprising suspect standing over the body. Lots of twists and turns, with a plot that shines a light on the plight of young women caught in profiteers' machinations. The switch of setting from Paris, the usual, lovingly detailed locale of these novels, to Barcelona, less well depicted, may not be well received by some fans, but this remains a solid entry in an engaging contemporary spy series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)