Author: teamnfv

An incredible Cold War spy story set in modern days

Alex Spellman is sitting at his desk, filling up some forms that need to evaluate his cognitive functions, something he loathes but he deems as necessary to keep his job. He has been relocated from the field, probably after ‘that’ business with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a call-girl, but he accepts that his security job can be done anyway even behind a desk.

Deanna Darby is in California, pouring herself another drink, the party well into swing. She is about to leave for North California, where she will train for her new job with the government, a choice that is now starting to weigh on her closest friendships, who are social media influencers, hobo-chic artists or spoilt brats living off daddy’s trust funds. As much as she loves them, she is already realising they are drifting apart and nothing will stop the process.

Vasili Konstantin Dragunov is pacing the room up and down, to calm his anger. Someone betrayed him, but he doesn’t know who or why. Not yet, at least. But he will have to find out soon, he comes from a long dynasty of oligarchs who served the government all the way up to the last Czar, after all. He achieved a lot in life, starting with the challenge of being great in school despite his dyslexia, he will overcome even this one, he reassures himself.

Kapusta, one of the most skilled snipers and assassins in Russia, sits in a dark room with a Lobaev rifle in front of him, in pieces. It’s a new acquisition, so he is assembling and disassembling it to get comfortable with his new toy. He has always been the odd one, since he was a child: his peculiar interests and formidable aim always put the other kids off, until he decided not to care anymore and enjoy his being different and alone. Until Dominika. She was kind to him, warm, and she didn’t seem to notice his facial disfigurement. But last time they saw each other, they parted on a not so friendly note and he now regrets it. As soon as this assignment is over, he will ask her out for dinner.

Alex wakes up in a motel room, with a mysterious woman by his side.

Alex thought her fragrance was somehow familiar.

‘Alex?’ she whispered Another grunt. ‘I love you, you know that don’t you? I’m so glad we are in this together. You make me feel safe. I really couldn’t do this all on my own.’

He knows nothing about her, beside her scent, but it’s not the first time he has blackouts or entire chunks of time cut off his memory. This time, the last thing Alex remembers is being on a plane from London to Madrid. But he realises he’s already been in the motel for a few days, at least: the room lost the freshness it still has when its occupant just spent a night, there is the usual little clutter left behind by travellers, his shaving kit in the bathroom, and it must have been bought locally because it’s the cheap, single use type. Deanna! That’s her name, Alex suddenly remembers, they met on the plane and they immediately hit it off.

In the UK, long before the time Alex and Deanna share the same bed, eight men meet in an old school conference room, richly decorated during a time when civil servants and secret services didn’t have to make their budgets and expenditures public. They exchange greetings, manly slaps on the shoulders, study each other. Some are more open and cordial, others are tensed and wary. Some of them are long time friends, others know only each other’s reputation. The reason for their gathering is to stop an attack against Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, who is discussing a ceasefire agreement with the terrorist group ETA. This time, though, it seems that the agreement will be solid enough to stick, and, of course, there are some who are against it. One of them is a man known as Dienteputo, the one the team has been tasked to stop.

Back in Spain at the present time, Deanna has lost Alex. She relaxed so much that she comfortably fell asleep and woke up to an empty room. She rushes to get dressed and get out, frantically looking for him. It would be a complicated matter to explain to her boss if she couldn’t find him anymore.

He was a conspicuously social person, gregarious at times, although he did have an understandable dark side due to the op’ in Navarre that failed so horribly. He had never really got over the fact that he lost men in an operation that was under his control.

She finds him quite easily, though, and closer than she expected. Across the road from their motel there is a church, and when Deanna pushes the door, she finds him there sitting in one of the pews, lost after another blackout: he suddenly remembered that there is someone after him. This person has not been active for the past three days and they both want to believe the threat is over, but they have to re-evaluate their situation: back to the motel they find their room ransacked. They have to be on the go as soon as they can, destination Mexico. Alex knows someone that lives there who might help them escape.

It’s in these circumstances that we find out that Deanna is a CIA undercover agent.

‘This man Spellman is, or used to be at least, one of us. That is he is OffCo. Offensive Counterintelligence, MI5. Ever since Navarre, after he took his six month sabbatical, he has been consulting on overseas threats to UK intelligence. He has unqualified high access to assets abroad, ours as well as the British’ explained Osterman, ‘You see how delicate this could get?’

This is the briefing Osterman, Deanna’s boss, gave her before she started her mission. Alex’s bosses are worried about him too, because lately he’s been acting weird and as much as a routine investigation was opened on his account, Graves, Alex’s boss, is also personally concerned about his wellbeing.

When they reach Graham in Mexico, Alex’s friend and former colleague looks terrible. He is clearly paranoid and the news that another colleague has been recently murdered made him even more wary.

‘I think I know’ said Graham’ Do you remember the last job? The job in the Pyrenees’

‘How could I forget?’ said Alex ‘You think I would forget losing half of my team?’

‘Of course not. But of the four of us who are left, one is dead, you are being chased and I am being watched. What do you make of that?’ asked Graham rhetorically, ‘I have a theory. I have been wondering what happened to the four of us after we were held by ETA and that damned mad Spanish quack. You know as well as I do that there is a week that we can’t account for. What do you think happened to us?’ 

Leaving Alex, Deanna and Graham in Mexico, we move to Russia, where we find Vasili hiding in his childhood home, 1500 kilometres north of Moscow. The location is secluded and not easily accessible, but he still doesn’t feel safe. It’s only a matter of time before the KGB finds him, and he is sure about it because he is former KGB himself. So, he also knows that there is always the need for ‘insurance’. His lies in the fact that he made sure the Russian athletes at the 2012 Olympics won as many medals as they could, and wanted to use this favour to move South of the country; instead he had been ostracised and excluded, and now he wants to use the names of all the sleeper agents on Russian ground to have what he wanted in the first place.

Vasili was given the means and the funds to make everything run smoothly, greasing palms, destroying samples, paying off the chemists and so on. It had all been fine until the World Anti-Doping Agency had uncovered his dealings. Now they were a global disgrace and he was the scapegoat, there was even talk of the Russian team not competing in the 2016 Olympics. After a bit of digging, Vasili understood that Alex Spellman and his team were the answer for the predicament he now found himself in, the same Alex Spellman that he crossed many years before in the Pyrenees. Back then, Vasili was dealings with a Spanish doctor by the name of Ignasi Quiros, who was involved with a group of Basque separatists.

Quiros was part of a small ETA faction that wanted to stop the ceasefire with Zapatero, and the MI5 team in charge of stopping them was led by Alex Spellman. British intervention had to look accidental, though, because it would have been hell to pay if the British were found in a place where they had no jurisdiction. Somehow Vasili knew all the details of the operation and before Alex and his men could do what they were supposed to, two slavic mercenaries paid by Vasili sabotaged the British mission, killed half of the team and left the other half unconscious. What the remaining part of the team didn’t know was that Quiros, who was working on hallucinogens and hypnosis, had the four of them at his mercy for a few days, and he conducted his experiments on newly developing subconscious indoctrination techniques on them, before sending them back home. What the remaining four are subconsciously learning without knowing are the names of sleeper agents in the West.

Complex plot? Perhaps. The final result? Absolutely outstanding. There is so much in this book – action, love, Cold War tactics, history, thriller, suspence, friendships and spies – and each element works brilliantly with the other. There isn’t a single word that could have been cut in the editing process, a paragraph not intertwined with the previous and the next, not a single loose thread at the end of the story. The story has been written, crafted and polished many times before seeing its released form and it shows. It was a pleasure to read it, exciting to follow the characters in their adventures, highly satisfying reaching the end and the long, explanatory paragraph where all the remaining questions are finally answered. It’s probably the best book I have read this year, definitely one of the best self-published books I have ever read. It took Paul roughly six years to work on it, but let’s’ be honest: it shows. And even if we know by talking to him previously that Paul is not looking to get into mainstream publishing, we really hope he’ll change his mind, because what he has here is a real diamond in the rough, and more people beside us deserve to enjoy its beauty.

You can grab your copy on Paul Richardson’s website.

A mix of romance, fiction and drama in Rebecca J. Cole first novel

Emma Grace has not an easy life. She is applying the finishing touching in front of a mirror, before leaving her house for a job interview, and she is doing her best to cover up the bruises her stepfather left on her skin the previous night. She applied for a waitress position in a diner downtown Harmony, and Nora, the owner, after asking a few, targeted questions, hires her on the spot.

Emma Grace finds the job not too difficult, having some experience helps her to get accustomed to new place easily, a bit of money means she can afford groceries and the odd extra for herself, even if her stepfather still drains the most of her paycheque and keeps selling her around his new ‘friends’, a copy of the ones of the city they lived before, just with different names. You give, you get, is the mantra that Emma Grace repeats to herself to get out of bed one more day. One of her colleagues, Denise, notices what’s going on and offers the girl to crash at her place for a while, but Emma Grace refuses, saying she can take care of herself.

In the meanwhile, in a different part of the country, Dante is talking details with his father. He is going to be sent to Harmony to expand his fathers’ business.

“I thought Dominic was claiming Harmony.”

Giovanni scoffed. “Dominic is a power hungry low-life. He’s already made too many enemies by breaking off with Schiavoni. His days are numbered. I’m surprised he’s still alive after what he did to Vittorio’s daughter.”

Dante takes two of his most faithful men with him, Carlo and Marco, and they leave for Harmony. At first, they drive around to get accustomed to the city and its layout, and then they stop for lunch in a diner downtown, the same where Emma Grace works. She draws Dante’s attention immediately, but so does he, because Emma Grace co-workers are head over heels for him, while she barely seems to notice his magnetic charm.

“He’s scary. His eyes give me the creeps.”

This is Emma Grace opinion of him.

It will take Dante several weeks before talking to her about something more than his lunch order. But the waiting time will pay off: slowly, the conversation deepens enough to have personal exchanges and trade jokes. One day Emma Grace is sticking a poster to the front door: a funfair is in town. Dante arrives at the cafe while she is sticking the last corner, and after reading what it advertises, he asks her if she’ll go. At first she says no, but when Dante pressures her a bit more, he finds out that the reason why she won’t go is because she’s never been to a fair before and she wouldn’t know what to expect or how to behave.

“It’s a date”, he said.

Dante is not the type of person who will take a no for an answer, and Emma Grace feels safe with him, not pressure.

They agree to go on her day off, and while he is behaving like a caring and protective gentleman all along, holding her hand almost all the time, he is also taken aback by her pure reactions in front of things that, for any other 23 years old person, were considered childish pastimes. That evening he sends a bunch of flowers to Emma Grace’s home, as a tank you for the beautiful day, but when her stepfather finds out, he beats her up black and blue. She turns up to work the next morning barely able to cover for any of them, the bruises so bad that she doesn’t want to serve Dante’s table. He understands that something’s wrong and it doesn’t take him long to put two and two together. As soon as he leaves the diner, he goes to her house and Emma grace’s stepfather is the one being beaten black and blue this time. The message seems to go through this time, because all of a sudden Frank loses all interest in her.

Emma Grace, though, is not safe yet. One day the bell rings and she opens the door to face a man she only knows as one of Frank’s friends. He says that Franks owns him money, and when Emma Grace tells him that Frank is not home and she has no money, he replies that maybe she can come out with other, creative ways to compensate him. She tries all she can to persuade him not too, she even attempt to run away, but unfortunately Emma Grace receives a soundly beating, before Dante can intervene. She ends up in hospital, where she is told she suffered a miscarriage. At this point the truth about Frank abuses has to come out and it’s not an easy pill to swallow for Dante. He gets his revenge, though, getting rid of Frank and his friend. Emma Grace is finally free.

The two of them start to date regularly – dinners, Christmas, Valentine’s day – Emma Grace is introduced to his family, but all this without knowing Dante and his family are mobsters. Eventually, she will find out, but not in the best way. Since she is, officially or not, Dante’s girlfriend, they are targeting her to get to him, and Dante is forced to open up and tell her the truth to protect her. Will their relationship survive this test?

When I was presented with the book, I was expecting a romance, pure and simple. Instead it mixes different styles – romance, fiction, drama – but it manages to keep the rules of all of them superficial, creating its unique mix. It appeals to many categories, but it also misses the prerogatives typical of each one: there is no explicit sex involved, there is no internal struggle of the characters, Dante’s point of view appear rarely, leaving him in the dark, the two main characters, who will eventual fall in love, don’t struggle in the pursue of their object of affection, because they are already dating before chapter 4, the domestic violence theme is discussed, but with few brushes instead of in emotional details, the same is to be said for the struggles Emma Graces goes through (violence, rape, a miscarriage), leaving the book in a sort of limbo. There are some good dialogues, though, which are one of the most difficult parts of writing, and the narrative is pleasant, but the book needs plot and narration refinements. It’s not bad as a first effort, especially because it tries to mix different genres, each with its own, strict, specific set of rules, and we hope to read more from Rebecca in the future, when she will perfect her style.

Find out more about Rebecca and her books on her website and social media (Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads).

A debut novel by Chellé Luckie

Astra wakes up from a nightmare. Her father, Victor, is readily by her side, to give comfort, while her mother, Elisabeth, is ready to battle: enough is enough she says. Evaline can not keep failing classes because her sister keeps waking her up in the middle of the night when she is having nightmares. He is dead, says her sister, stopping living your life won’t bring him back, especially because he wasn’t your boyfriend but your best friend’s boyfriend. That doesn’t make it any less painful, replies Astra. We will then find out that this mysterious ‘he’ has a name, Azazel.

The next morning, Astra walks downstairs to a surprise: at the breakfast bar sits Tracy, her best friend and Azazel’s girlfriend, who came to pick her up to go to school. It’s been a month since Azazel’s death, and during this time Astra barely left her room, didn’t go to school and avoided all her friends, including Tracy. It’s time for her to react, insists Tracy.

But once the two girls are alone in the car, Tracy drops the act and pulls a bottle from under her seat. She is drinking again. The two girls start to talk about Azazel’s last minutes: he took Astra to the Old Lady Bella, but we don’t know why. What we know though is that Astra is researching this place called Hiboria, which is potentially dangerous, the Carabinieri are taking their sweet time to conduct their investigations and while Astra thinks Azalea was affiliated with the Kipi, Tracy says that someone in the Shikka must be involved instead.

“You know what’s not cool?” Tracy hissed, “You! Your mother is the ice queen bitch of the Shikka who has cursed more of the Kipi’s children than I can count. Your uncle is the dark prince—a tyrannical investigator who causes most of his victims to commit suicide afterward. And then Gabe—”

“Shut your mouth,” Astra warned, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Anyone but him!”

Astra snaps, pointing a finger at her friend. The Kipi is composed of Gio adults — adults whose megin hasn’t awaken yet. Everyone has megin. Most people just don’t have enough for an affinity— or enough to manipulate majik. But what if what happened to Azalea is connected to my megin? wonders Astra. If my megin was activated, would Tracy hate me too? Astra’s mother is a Bahkir with an affinity for Cryokinesis. Her father is a Gio, like herself and Evaline, but they are still expected to turn because of how strong their mother and uncle are. Well, Astra tries to reassure herself, next year is the year of the truth. If it doesn’t happen then, it won’t happen at all… or usually this is what happens to others.

In class, Astra meets Troy, who seems surprised to see her. He also asks her about what she told the Carabinieri, but she doesn’t remember. We learn a bit more about the word Astra lives in when she meets another classmate.

Gabriel stretched as he walked out of his first class with his new charge taking her time trailing behind him. It amused him how interested she was with the mundane structure of a Gio’s life. It bored him to tears. Gio had the luxury of understanding and knowing the details of the life of a Bahkir because the megin would only sometimes activate in their body. Scientists weren’t sure if it was a matter of anatomy, genetics, or a stressor that causes the megin to activate. They only knew it to lie within all, and like other genetic traits, it could remain dormant for one generation and grow stronger than ever in the next.

In the middle of class, Astra is called out and when she arrives, Azazel’s sister and a Carabinieri are waiting for her. Right behind here, there is Gabriel, listening. Azael’s sister starts moving accusations about Astra killing her brother and it’s too much for Astra, who releases her veil, a psychic form of magic that can stop others. Victor, Astra’s father, is in school as well and promptly arrives to stop her. Only then he notices a light coming off her chest: it’s a sigil to her megin that her mother set up.

Astra passes out and her father calls her mother to ask why. I didn’t put that sigil, she says. It’s a very good replica of mine, but I can assure you it’s not mine. Whoever did it, though, did it with a specific purpose, which is to stop Astra. Partially convinced, but not totally reassured by the explanation, Victor picks up Evaline too and the three of them go to a place called Kora’s Temple. It’s basically a strip club, despite the fancy name. Inside, he asks for Rita, the owner, he needs her help. Astra is rapidly blue.

“She was and will always be a Kipi,” Tirany snapped, ignoring Lionel’s shaking head.

Rita takes Astra to another place, where there is a whole new lot of people, we hardly know anything about. They are involved in something, but we don’t know who they are or what they are doing nor why.

We discover something more about Old Lady Bella, though: she is the owner of a shop where lines and lines of belladonna fill the walls. She also is Azazel grandmother.

The big mistery we need to work out is Astra’s megin, and how she woke it up the night Azazel died. What actually happened that night? And why can’t Astra remember? 

During the ritual that will remove, or at least attempt to remove, the two sigils that are interfering with Astra’s memory and life, another entity takes possession of her, and she wakes up in Limbus. This will only lead to a long streak of events, where multiple characters will chase, help and disrupt each other’s path only to reach an unforeseen conclusion.  

The story itself is quite interesting: there are many innovative elements, a good combination of real world and fantasy, a good pace. However, there are too many characters, and most of them have no roots, they fly high like kites in the sky. When narrating about a supernatural or fantastic world, it’s important to explain to readers the set of rules they will encounter during the book. A few, very specific, very detailed lines that will set the tone from the very first pages. We feel that in this book, instead, we get to a point where several names start popping up but no one knows who these characters are.

While we appreciated the fast pace, at time, though, it was too fast, and narration has been sacrificed for the sake of action, making the book an infinite sequel of events quickly happening one after the other. There are also too many chapters ending with a cliffhanger, but there is no building up to them, which made us question why they were there in the first place.

Overall, we are under the impression that being a debut novel, perhaps the pressure to publish fast might have gotten in the way of crafting a better thought through book, which is honestly a shame.

SCION: Dawn of Midnight is available for purchase here.