Ghosts of Havana

July 11, 2016
Present-day Cuba provides the backdrop for Moss’s timely if uneven third novel featuring State Department troubleshooter Judd Ryker (after 2015’s Minute Zero). When four friends from the D.C. suburbs agree to go deep-sea fishing off Florida, two are unaware that one of them, a descendant of a Bay of Pigs invader, has a secret agenda; the fourth is in on the game. When their boat strays into Cuban waters and gets captured, Judd’s boss sends him to Havana, to run a back-channel operation to free the “Soccer Dad Four” before they become tokens in a political badminton game between the U.S. and Cuba. Meanwhile, Judd’s wife, Jessica, a former black-ops CIA agent, seeks out the guy who rented the fishing boat to the four Americans. Moss, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, does a good job depicting the tactics that our intelligence agencies might employ in negotiating with a foreign power, but most of the action centers on the highly capable Jessica, leaving Judd to perform relatively more mundane tasks, like drinking all night with Cuba’s intelligence chief while discussing the terms of the men’s return. Agent: Josh Getzler, HSG Agency.

July 1, 2016
After Havana seizes the fishing boat of four Americans in Cuban waters and holds them captive, the U.S. State Department sends its ace crisis strategist Judd Ryker to the island on a mission that grows more and more mysterious.Even in the wake of a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, Havana remains a thorn in Washington's side. In the aftermath of the boating incident, Florida Congresswoman Brenda Adelman-Zamora, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, calls for the U.S. to suspend diplomatic ties with Cuba and reimpose sanctions. The CIA's unnamed Deputy Director of Operations aims to fuel an insurrection in Cuba but has no clue who is in line to succeed the 86-year-old El Comrade Jefe (read: Raul Castro). The State Department, meanwhile, wants former academic Ryker and his Critical Response Unit, which expertly manipulates moments of crisis in America's favor, to influence Cuba's future. Even before Ryker lands in Cuba for an ultrasecret meeting with military intelligence chief Oswaldo Guerrero--the notorious "Diablo" known for ruining American schemes going back to the Bay of Pigs--Judd's CIA operative wife, Jessica, is in Florida investigating the boaters' shady backgrounds. The book's running gimmick is that husband and wife, who have found themselves at tactical odds in other countries, have promised never again to work on the same case in the same city. But here is Jessica, who's supposed to be vacationing with their kids, counting the lies she's telling Judd as she gets deeper into danger. Though their Mr. & Mrs. Smith act isn't always believable, it gives the book a lighter and breezier appeal than Moss' previous efforts, The Golden Hour (2015) and Minute Zero (2015).Former government official Moss offers a lively, informed, and timely political novel about Cuba's future and America's role in it.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.