THE BERLIN CONSPIRACY
by Tom Gabbay
Cold War spycraft and the Kennedy assassination constitute the not-exactly-virgin territory explored with a certain noirish flair in this familiar but well-made debut thriller.
Like many a spy before him, Jack Teller has left the CIA behind and hasn’t the slightest intention of ever going back. A lot of fishing, a bit of drinking, maybe some writing here and there—that’s what Jack has planned for retirement. Until, of course, Sam Clay, his old boss at the Company, calls him one night with the news that an anonymous East German official has information for the United States and will pass it on to only one man: Jack. As it turns out, the official is Jack’s long-lost brother (a subplot that never quite manages to take off), stepping out of the shadows just long enough to tell him about a CIA plan to assassinate JFK in Berlin and turn the Cold War into a hot one. With little more than his wits and a stock of hard-boiled phrases stolen from the Sam Spade School of Elocution, Jack must ferret out the traitors and halt their plot before the president is offed and the nukes go a-flying. The plot’s twists and turns are more perfunctory than pulse-quickening, but Gabbay, a veteran television programmer, evocatively captures the dark, dank atmosphere of East Berlin.
Predictable, but an undeniable delight all the same.