VERA KELLY IS NOT A MYSTERY

After leaving the CIA, a former spy becomes a private detective in New York City.

The welcome sequel to Who Is Vera Kelly? (2018) opens in August 1967, a year after Vera’s last mission for the CIA. Both her personal and professional lives are upended when she's dumped by her girlfriend and loses her job for being a lesbian on the same day. At a loss, Vera decides to use her CIA training to open an office as a private investigator, and when a Dominican couple asks her to find the missing son of a politically endangered family for her first major case, all of Vera’s skills, intuition, and self-reliance will be tested. Vera discovers the boy has run away from foster care after his caretaker died, and her subsequent trip to the Dominican Republic to find the boy’s parents echoes her escape from Argentina in the last book when her investigation reveals her employers are not who they seem and she's taken hostage. In between her undercover obligations, Vera attempts a new relationship with a bartender named Maxine but finds she cannot develop substantial connections with others while keeping all of her secrets. Author Knecht uses this second book to delve more into Vera’s personal life and history while also deftly balancing the host of characters related to the mystery. Knecht’s prose is expansive in Vera’s moments of introspection and lively in moments of action, and she moves easily between Vera’s first-person narration and third-person scenes regarding the missing boy. Readers will be thrilled by Vera Kelly’s return.

A worthy and welcome continuation of a subversive series.