Amanda Cole manages a new case and a potentially-rogue friend and colleague…

CIA officials Amanda Cole and Kath Frost must work together to untangle a global bribery scheme involving murder, wealthy oligarchs, and high-level Swiss bankers — unless Kath’s mysterious past tears them apart first…

Amanda Cole’s posting as the CIA station chief in Rome is normally too quiet for her liking. But when a chef’s body washes ashore on Capri, and Amanda learns he worked for a Russian oligarch with deep Kremlin ties, her alarm bells start ringing. Even more suspicious is the fact that the oligarch had hosted a private dinner with NATO’s deputy secretary general the night the chef died.

To get answers, Amanda calls on her former partner Kath Frost, a semi-retired CIA legend who is as brilliant as she is unpredictable. As they dig deeper, they discover a web of corruption that stretches from Moscow to Geneva to Washington, eventually uncovering a Kremlin-backed scheme to bribe NATO officials and tip the global balance of power.

But when a suave Swiss banker named Julian Schmidt emerges at the center of the scheme, it becomes clear that Kath shares an intimate history with him and that she may know more than she’s letting on. It turns out that Kath’s past is full of shadows, and the choices she made decades ago, in the gray borderlands of the Soviet collapse, are resurfacing now with devastating consequences. Amanda must uncover the truth about Kath — and whether she can really be trusted at all — before it’s too late.

This is the sequel to The Helsinki Affair, which was Pitoniak’s first spy novel. I’ve been a long-time fan of the author’s work — I started with a very early ARC of her excellent debut, The Futures — and I’ve enjoyed each of her new novels. I have been particularly enjoying this pivot to espionage. While The Swiss Agent isn’t the author’s best, it is nevertheless an engaging read, and I enjoyed it.

Amanda Cole is now CIA station chief in Rome. It’s a sleepy post, not one likely to generate much excitement for those posted there — despite, that is, the incredible city, food, etc. For thrill-seeking, younger CIA agents, it’s not the plum position that us civilians might think it is. Cole, who has an uncanny knack for making intelligence connections and getting involved in cases that she maybe shouldn’t be involved in, has her interest piqued by a curious report of a chef’s death. The chef is connected to a Russian oligarch who is suspected of plotting against the West, and especially NATO. What follows is an investigation that sees Cole navigate internal CIA politics, US national and international politics, and connects to her friend and colleague Kath Frost’s mysterious past in Switzerland.

The novel is primarily told from Cole’s and Frost’s perspectives. Through the latter’s POV, we learn more about the CIA’s activities in Europe in the 1990s. Pitoniak only gradually reveals Frost’s past actions, which adds some good mystery to the story, as well as a couple of decent red herrings.

Pitoniak somewhat picks up the thread of Cole’s father, who was central to the story of The Helsinki Affair. While he seems mostly peripheral to the main story of this novel (he offers Amanda some advice on her ongoing situation), his chapters nevertheless feel fleshed-out and potentially-important, which suggests that he’s going to be far more central to a likely third novel in the series. I’ll certainly be at the front of the line to read that, if/when it becomes available.

If you are already a fan of the author’s work, then I don’t have to convince you to read The Swiss Agent. It has everything that has made Pitoniak’s previous books engaging and must reads: excellent writing, believable and engaging characters, and a good focus on her characters’ personalities and relationships. All of the characters are three-dimensional and mostly well-written. Even the antagonists are well-drawn, and don’t come across as cartoons or typical thriller-baddies.

Sometimes, it feels like the novel had difficulty settling on which genre it wanted to occupy, which made for a slightly uneven reading experience. In addition, there were times when none of the characters seemed emotionally mature enough to hold the positions they have — the CIA director, the US president, Cole, and Frost all at different times acted in ways that didn’t seem realistic and a bit exaggerated. I’m not sure if this was an attempt to humanize these characters, or perhaps echo the id-driven US administration that is currently wreaking havoc around the world, but it was occasionally jarring. Perhaps it was also an attempt to pop the common conception of CIA agents as being (or needing to be) hyper-capable and rational actors, and remind readers that, no, they can be messy humans as well. Both are solid ideas, but there were a couple of times when maybe this went a bit too far, and could have been a little dialled back.

Despite these quibbles, I still enjoyed The Swiss Agent. It kept me reading well into the night on two occasions, and I felt invested in the fate of her characters. (Especially Julian’s…) I now find myself in a frequent situation: I’ve finished a Pitoniak novel way before it actually hits shelves, and now have to wait a long time of the author’s next book… It’s not a terrible problem to have.

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Anna Pitoniak’s The Swiss Agent is due to be published by Simon & Schuster in North America on December 1st. (At the time of writing, I couldn’t find information about a UK edition, but the first in the series was published by No Exit Press.)

Also on CR: Reviews of The Futures, Our American Friend, and The Helsinki Affair

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Review copy received via Edelweiss