THE NOSTRADAMUS TRAITOR

A jumpy and complex spy puzzle—scooting back and forth between 1941 and 1978—that's pretty darn good but should perhaps have been a great deal better; one often has the feeling with the prolific John Gardner (The Werewolf Trance) that a really first-rate spy novel would emerge if he'd only give it enough time to grow. The contrived shenanigans here begin in 1978 when a middle-aged German woman appears in London, inquiring about the grave of her husband—a Nazi spy allegedly executed during World War II. But Herbie Kruger of British Intelligence, who sees this frau as a potential recruit for his new European espionage network, finds no record of such a Nazi spy—till he digs out some old top-security Fries about Operation Nostradamus, a WW II plan to create dissension among Nazi bigwigs by playing on their belief in the occult soothsayings of 16th-century seer Michel de Nostradame. Herbie, determined to ferret out the frau's complete background, enlists the help of a survivor of Op Nostradamus, now a top man at British Intelligence, who agrees to recall the whole 1941 operation (his first) in detail. Thus the recurring flashbacks—about the young British agent's arrival in France, about his passionate affair with a Resistance mademoiselle, and about the occult-spreading mission and how it somehow escalated into an assassination attempt on Himmler deep in Germany. Meanwhile, back in 1978, someone's trying to kill the frau; and the link between past and present turns out to be a winner indeed—the sort of gnarled fabric that Le Carre would have fine-stitched into a dark, rich tapestry. With Gardner, however, one admires the cleverness but winds up wondering why the book that leads up to it—except for big, slow, Mahler-loving Herbie, who's a dandily downbeat hero-never settles down and takes hold. Still: yards above the run of the espionage mill.