GLENDA PAAL & THE DEVIL'S DAWN

In Vincenti’s World War II thriller, a young Swedish spy makes her mark.

Vincenti, whose last work was The Sandman (2018), creates a smart, fearless lead in Glenda Paal, a “linguistic chameleon.” At 16, Glenda is spending the summer working for the Swedish Legation in Berlin, where she meets German spies, falls in love, and becomes pregnant. In 1939 Sweden, having a child out of wedlock is illegal, so Glenda’s father uses his undercover contacts to smuggle her to Canada after she gives birth to a son. At a British-run training camp, she receives combat and spy training. In Ottawa, Glenda fosters a relationship with Russian intelligence and subsequently becomes a triple agent to defeat Nazism. While working for the Canadians, she’s supposedly spying on her Russians contacts for the Germans. She develops multiple personas and successfully completes missions involving defections and smuggling people to safety all while juggling three demanding spy agencies. Glenda finds herself on an even more dangerous mission when she’s assigned to the Manhattan Project compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where her identity and intentions are thoroughly scrutinized. There she witnesses the first atomic bomb explosion, the “devil’s dawn” of the book title. Glenda just hopes the war will end soon so she can join her son and parents in Sweden and maybe reconnect with her German boyfriend. Glenda is a stellar, larger-than-life (in good spy-genre style) lead. She does have a few minor flaws to humanize her, such as confusing the makeup styles of two of her personas. Vincenti’s nail-biter has a dauntless hero at its center and capably renders the realities of World War II. J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Stalin, and other historical figures make memorable appearances. The novel also does a fine job of exploring Sweden’s attempt to remain neutral in the war, the realities of living in a makeshift community in the desert, and the morality of making a terrible weapon to end a terrible war.

A layered spy novel helmed by a remarkable female agent.