The Brotherhood of the Rose by David MorrellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of the most complex spy thrillers I’ve ever read. Don’t let the publication date, and the correspondingly dated technology (actual phone booths are used) put you off.
The premise starts with the idea that the highest level operatives in all of the international spy agencies meet and establish a network of safe houses. These sanctuaries are inviolable, regardless of one’s agency.
Cut forward a number of years, when someone is killed in sanctuary … and another operative is framed for it.
That’s where the book really begins. Friends Chris and Saul are CIA agents who’ve known each other since their childhood in an orphanage. They’re recruited to a paramilitary boarding school, which eventually feeds them into the spy network. They’ve got to figure out who was behind the murder in the safe house which, of course, puts them in danger.
The book is tightly constructed and filled with plausible spycraft and believable characters. Everyone is the hero of his or her own story, which makes the book and its characters complicated.
Highly recommended.
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Sharon E. Cathcart 