In my new thriller, January and July, there’s not a lot of spare time for reading. Most of the reading is in old case files as January Holte, a “tenacious bookworm” and intel analyst who is trying to find a traitor selling secrets. She’s helped by a rookie bodyguard, July Whitlock, who has misplaced his first and only client and is desperate to find him. Together, they go to a small Texas town full of mysterious characters and intrigue to search for the same man, who holds the key to both their mysteries.
I do describe January as a bookworm, but I think at least five of the characters would be readers, and here’s the books I think they’d read for a literary break.
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January Holte reads Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes
Helen MacInnes is often labelled the Queen of Spy Writers, and in one of her early novels (1942) the hero’s challenge mirrors January’s. She’s going undercover into a small town to find a missing man who has answers she needs; in MacInnes’s novel English agent Martin Hearn enters a small town in Nazi-occupied France to gather information. He must impersonate a Frenchman named Corlay (they greatly resemble each other, an old spy trope), fooling Corlay’s family, friends, and enemies.
In both cases Hearn and January must navigate local grudges, rivalries, and determine who they can trust. In both cases, Lethey, Texas and Saint-Dèodat, Brittany are towns with murderous secrets.
July Whitlock reads Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
July is named for a character in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (his German mother read the novel and assumed July was a common American boys’ name), but a great choice for his reading would be Eric Ambler’s 1952 Epitaph for a Spy. It’s a story that feels like an Agatha Christie novel set at a hotel but instead of catching a murderer you’re trying to unmask a spy.
Josef Vadassy is a stateless teacher enjoying a quiet vacation at a small French Riviera hotel. But when the film in his camera shows photos of a classified military base and the authorities threaten him with arrest, he must prove his innocence and find the real spy among his fellow guests. Like Josef, July is at a crossroads in his life, trying to make a new future out of past losses, but his building a better life is endangered by getting unexpectedly involved in a world of intrigue and betrayal.
Gabriel Toussaint reads The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Gabriel Toussaint is originally from Belgium, but has made his home in Lethey, TX, where he runs an unusual business: a resort motel composed of themed cabins. An intelligent and artistic man, Gabe tries to rise above the petty rivalries and bitterness between people in Lethey, and tries to help January navigate the town’s mysteries. He would no doubt enjoy reading the exploits of his native land’s most famous fictional detective.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is Hercule Poirot’s first case and the expatriate Belgian shows his brilliance in solving the murder of his benefactor. Like Poirot, Gabe has no family as he is a recent widower and is a bit unmoored, a Belgian who has settled in a new land he never dreamed he would make his home, and finding himself surrounded by suspicious people with deep secrets, any of whom might be guilty of murder or more.
Millicent Cziller reads The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Millicent Cziller is a woman with an unsuspected past; she’s on psychiatric medications and has a fragmented memory, and no one is quite sure what happened to her years ago. To January and July, Millicent seems a blank slate. But she is expert with computers, she remembers bits of a past shared with her neighbor Bill Connors (who January and July are searching for). And she’s constantly underestimated by her vicious brother, her friends at her church, and others.
There’s hidden steel in Millicent, and she’d enjoy Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, where four retirees—one of which has a secretive past—work together to solve homicides. An ongoing theme in this wonderful series is that the senior detectives are constantly underestimated (as is Millicent), when the truth is they bring all their experience, knowledge, fortitude, and sense to solving their cases.
In their first case, Joyce (former nurse), Ibrahim (former psychiatrist), Elizabeth (current mysterious person), and Ron (former union organizer and current West Ham fan) investigate the murder of a local developer, much to the annoyance of the police. No one thinks they can actually find the killer. And in Lethey, no one thinks Millicent can help reveal the truth. They are wrong.
Bill Connors reads Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner
Bill Connors is central to the mystery at the heart of January and July. And the central question is: is he a good guy (as July believes, since Bill was his first client and was so considerate to July) or a bad guy (as January believes, a former intel informant who was a criminal and who might be involved now in the black market for classified info)?
A book Bill would appreciate is Heat, the novel sequel to the classic 90s film, with characters spanning all the shades of gray: heist experts who just want to steal without complications, police detectives trying to stop them—and both wanting to take down a vicious gang threatening their work and their lives.
The story moves in time from the immediate aftermath of the film, with Chris Sheherlis on the run, to a previous era in the late 80s where thief Neil McCauley and detective Vincent Hanna are both facing dangerous threats on their fateful collision course with each other. This could well be a world Bill Connors would recognize.
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There are more characters in January and July who would be fun to match to books, but the bookmobile in Lethey is behind schedule, so I’ll stop here. Happy reading!
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