Alan Hlad - The Book Spy

An American librarian. A Portuguese bookseller. A mission to change the tide of the war. 1942: With the war’s outcome hanging in the balance, every sliver of intelligence can be critical. Though far from the battlefields, cities like Lisbon, Portugal’s neutral capital, become lynchpins in a different kind of warfare, as President Roosevelt sends an unlikely new taskforce on a unique mission. They are librarians and microfilm specialists trained in espionage, working with a special branch of the Office of Strategic Services. By acquiring and scouring Axis newspapers, books, technical manuals, and periodicals, the librarians can gather information about troop location, weaponry, and military plans.
Maria Alves, a microfilm expert working at the New York Public Library, is dispatched to Lisbon, where she meticulously photographs publications and sends the film to London to be analyzed. Working in tandem with Tiago Soares, a brave and honorable bookstore owner on a precarious mission of his own—providing Jewish refugees with forged passports and visas—Maria acquires vital information, including a directory of arms factories in Germany.
But as she and Tiago grow closer, any future together is jeopardized when Maria’s superiors ask her to pose as a double agent, feeding misinformation to Lars Steiger, a wealthy Swiss banker and Nazi sympathizer who launders Hitler’s gold. Gaining Lars’ trust will bring Maria into the very heart of the Fuhrer’s inner circle. And it will provide her with a chance to help steer the course of war, if she is willing to take risks as great as the possible rewards . . .

Comment: When I saw the blurb of this book, I was immediately interested because it would feature Portuguese characters and part of the setting would definitely be in Portugal during the 1940s. I was so curious to see how the foreign author would do this and I was also dazzled by that gorgeous cover! I've sort of convinced a friend to read it with me but, sadly, the execution wasn't as brilliant as the cover...

In this story we meet Maria Alves, an American woman whose Spanish and Portuguese parents used to be photojournalists and because of that, Maria is good with languages and with travel. She is now working as a librarian and when the US enters WWII, she does what she can to convince the person responsible that she would be the perfect candidate to work overseas to microfilm German or Nazi content so that the information could be preserved.

Tiago Soares is a bookshop owner in Lisbon, who secretly helps people of Jew origins, who are on the run looking for a way to escape to America. When Maria arrives in Lisbon, part of her work and of her co workers is to check the bookshops and when these two meet, it seems what they have in common could develop into something special. But the Portuguese secret police is watching Tiago and Maria sees herself being more spy than librarian... will they be able to finish their tasks before danger strikes?

This was potentially a great story because the ingredients were all there: libraries and librarians, bookshops, WWII agendas and the good vs evil old time battle... I could do without the tension of the spying scenes but I figured the author would balance everything well but I must say I was unsold on the writing style. There were some things which irritated me and that distracted me from, perhaps, enjoying the story more.

The narrative style was very much on the "tell" style, and that seemed to happen even when something more active was ongoing. How odd, that even while we see the characters do things, it felt more like telling than showing. Then, the most irritating element of all, how every place would be named in a very formal manner, even during dialogues or informal situations! For instance, Maria studied in Berkeley and saying this immediately informs anyone where it was without the need to add other information. But when Maria told this to someone in the US she said "..university of California, Berkeley". Ok, factual, but redundant. Another example is "Coimbra, Portugal" which would be important if she were saying this to someone in the US, but again redundant when speaking to someone in Portugal.

I know this might seem inconsequential in the big scheme, but it got on my nerves. At the same time, I was a little disappointed that the narrative was quite correct but so lacking in emotions, the characters would go through or deal with seriously heavy issues and I could maintain my distance form the emotions supposedly being portrayed, it was as if all was more formal than the fictional scenes would indicate. I suppose the author wanted to convey seriousness and veracity to all the real life situations he certainly investigated and that he could insert here, but the result wasn't as engaging as I hoped.

What I liked was to see my country through the eyes of an author who is not Portuguese. If I read correctly, he also lives partially here, so he was able to study some details quite well and used them correctly. I'm talking about historical facts and some history of the country but, again, in his desire to be informative, some things were too much. I think even for a non-Portuguese reader some information would see more academic than fictional. There were some moments where it felt like info dumping.

I was a little sad that we didn't have Maria more active in her librarian work. She did what she had to when she joined the special team of librarians overseas but I expected, considering it is her job, that there would be a lot more book talk or library elements... 

In the end, though, this is really a book on spying and some politics, rather than a romance featuring a librarian and a bookseller. Despite this, I liked some things, some passages, some interesting connections between subjects and the fact the author used facts to build up his historical fiction work.

The author seemed to include a slight romance hint but this was very, very superficial. I also found the end, in how Maria manages to accomplish a certain task, incredibly naive and unrealistic. It does help with the "fictional" part of the story but I doubt anything like that could have been possible. In fact, most of Maria's actions, before she left America and during her time in Portugal, were a little contrived and probably not that obviously easy to do. It made me think the book wasn't well executed and that kind of disappointed me.

Grade: 5/10