Black Bear

Peter Cotton #4

by Aly Monroe

The fourth in the series following the fortunes of British spy Peter Cotton as he navigates the treacherous uncertainties of the post-war world—for all fans of John le Carré, Robert Harris, Eric Ambler, and Graham Greene Sent to Manhattan as part of the British effort to build intelligence into the new United Nations Organization "from the foundations up," Agent Peter Cotton wakes up in the Ogden Clinic on East 76th Street, a private facility reserved for very special patients and veterans. He is told he was found badly bruised, slumped in a doorway, and that he had been injected with at least three "truth-drugs." He is lucky to be alive. Plagued by vertigo, color blindness, and tunnel vision, and unable to be certain what is real and what is hallucinatory, Cotton must piece together what has happened to him, who is responsible, and why. What he discovers is even more unsettling. His biggest uncertainty? Why he has been allowed to live.

Genres: Espionage, Historical Fiction, 20th Century

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Author of the Peter Cotton series, which begins in 1944, and takes us to different countries around the world during the aftermath of the second world war and the dismantling of the British colonies

The first three books in the series, 'The Maze of Cadiz', 'Washington Shadow', and 'Icelight' received excellent reviews. (See my website)

Washington Shadow' was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award.

Icelight was the winner of the 2012 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger.

All the books are available to buy on amazon.co.uk. and also amazon.com
and can also be downloaded on Kindle

The fourth book in the series, 'Black Bear', is published on 9 May 2013 and is now available to buy on amazon.

You will find more information and reviews, Q&As and extracts from the books on Aly's website (see above)

Reviews

[Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Black Bear' is a cold war espionage story. It starts with its hero, British Intelligence officer Peter Cotton, waking up from a particularly nasty drug fueled interrogation which he might be counted lucky to have survived. It could be the start of a James Bond story but this is a very different beast.

This is a story of recuperation, of the rebuilding of a life after a devastating incident, of the rebuilding of trust - with allies, with those around you and with your own senses. The focus is not action but on personal and private issues, ambitions and fears, and how these can interact with the political world of intelligence and affairs of state.

There is a real black bear in this story: it wanders unthinkingly into town and sparks an equally unthinking and fearful reaction. The other bear, here, however is the looming presence of Russia in the minds of the American people after World War II.

The novel is generally excellent. Comparisons might be made with Le Carre or with Graham Greene - and they capture the sense of confused loyalties and subtle shades of doubt that define the world the book inhabits - but neither does full justice to a creation that is very much Monroe's own.

The setting, the America in the late 1940s, is well and convincingly drawn. The small community that Cotton visits as he recovers, with its small town amusements and snobberies, seems vividly real. Only occasionally does any false note creep in (describing the quantity of water drunk as being 'about a litre' at one point seems out of place for a Briton in the US - pints or quarts would surely fit better).

My one complaint is that the ending feels oddly disappointing. There is no particular resolution. Quiet words are had and, apparently, there might be consequences but there seems little to draw the story's threads together. That might be the point, of course, but it leaves one slightly dissatisfied. This cannot undermine what had been a thoroughly engrossing read until that point, however.

This is the fourth novel about Peter Cotton. It might be that those who have read the previous books will find significance in the conclusion of this story that I did not. If this is an example of the sort of quality that Monroe's novels have, I shall, however, be likely to check out some of the previous offerings.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will not please everyone who picks it up and reads to the end; the good news is book 5 continues this story.
This is a terrific novel set in the world of intelligence in the Post-War reality of a weakened Britain trying to keep a place at the top table; rather than surviving on the scraps thrown to it by the USA.
All this is done through the life and work of Peter Cotton.
Here Aly Monroe takes a calculated risk by bringing him to a personal crisis, he is kidnapped and experimented upon by use of mind changing drugs in a new method of interrogation rather than physical torture. This time taken to explore and explain further her creation through this near death experience is a delight to me as we see his recovery and adjustment to what has been done to him. As a reader who has followed his story from book 1 this spotlight is both illuminating and interesting as more is revealed in his character; I get it when first time readers feel it is over long but for me it is wonderful writing exposing her main character to this in depth analysis. It reminded me at times to the personal struggles seen in a Graham Greene novel.
It is more real for all this time as we see Cotton coming to terms with the psychological, emotional and physical strains this whole experience has caused.
It asks questions of how we can survive and overcome and in broader strokes considers trust, integrity and personal identity. Behind all this is a mystery of who did this experimental on him, why they didn't finish him and through recovery will he be the same person and be avenged.
There are aspects of uncertainty and threats of danger but it isn't the simplistic story of a Bourne or Bond. Nor does it have the thrills and action set pieces
What is remarkable is the research to bring this period of history alive; it is fresh and rewarding. The stage is real and the interactions could and often did happen. Above all this is a novel of value in terms of conception and international relations; it is full of well drawn characters who have something to say. It is clever, profound but lastingly a terrific read.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredibly well researched book with a believable mixture of real and imagined characters. Monroe’s hero, Peter Cotton, becomes entrapped in mind-altering drugs used in interrogation experimentation following WW II and the beginning of the ‘cold’ war with Russia. I was totally immersed in her story. The Black Bear of the title has multiple references, most notably to a bagpipe dirge of that name, but also of the fear of Russia during that period in our history. A few real black bears also manage to make appearances in this story of political intrigue—in Cotton’s hallucinogenic dreams, as a cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker magazine, and an unfortunate bear who wanders into the northeastern community where Cotton is recuperating. Probably the most remarkable thing about Monroe’s book, is that she manages to create over 400 pages of tension essentially about a man on the mend from being overdosed with drugs. I’ve not read any of her other books about Peter Cotton, but this tale has definitely whetted my appetite.

[Fallon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very well written and it is a very interesting book.This is the best book about a spy that I have ever read. This book is full of adventures and mystery. This book is a must read for those who love spies, mysteries, and adventures.

[Paul Bish · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book! A very different 'spy'novel. The 4th in the excellent Peter Cotton series. Read the others first so you care about the main character Peter Cotton, a rising star in the compromised world of post ww2 British Intelligence.

The whole of the first half of the novel documents Cotton's struggle to save his life and mental health after he is found in a doorway in NYC destroyed by a cocktail of drugs in what seems to have been a botched experiment in using drugs rather than torture in interrogation. It is June 1947, and the United Nations is being set up as competing intelligence agencies jostle for position, mostly with their allies, and the "Cold War' is beginning n earnest, mirrored in the US by the increasing paranoia induced by the witch hunts of the Un-American Activities Commission. The hopes and idealism from the ending of WW2 are rapidly fading. The first half of the novel is truely harrowing. It is slow - but magnificent. The second half is about finding out who was responsible, and is also fantastic. I do hope their will be more to come!

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the US to assist in setting up the new United Nations Organisation in the summer of 1947, Peter Cotton wakes up in an exclusive private clinic to the news that he was found bruised and unconscious in a doorway after having apparently been injected with a cocktail of at least three different so-called truth drugs. Suffering from acute short-term memory loss surrounding the circumstances of his abduction as well as a number of other unpleasant aftereffects of the involuntary treatment he was subjected to, he attenpts to figure out what happened to him and why, who was behind it and, most importantly, how come he is even still alive to be contemplating these questions.

Like the previous books in the series, this was slow-paced but intriguing, keeping me hooked despite the middle part dragging a little.

[Ant · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not sure why I kept on reading this book when it became clear to me, somewhere in the middle, that it is the most boring spy novel ever conceived. Possibly to discover that bad books are still being published. To be fair, it is well written from the language point of view but it lacks any suspense, the dialogues put you to sleep, and there is absolutely no story. No character feels multidimensional, even Cotton - the hero, is superficial. We do not learn much about him as a person and I find him a boring 'spy' who does very little spying. Overall, as much fun as a phonebook.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Bear by Aly Monroe
Sent to Manhattan as part of the British effort to build intelligence into the new United Nations Organisation 'from the foundations up', Agent Peter Cotton wakes up in the Ogden Clinic on East 76th Street, a private facility reserved for very special patients and veterans.

He is told he was found badly bruised, slumped in a doorway, and that he had been injected with at least three 'truth-drugs'. He is lucky to be alive.

Plagued by vertigo, colour blindness and tunnel vision, and unable to be certain what is real and what hallucinatory, Cotton must piece together what has happened to him, find out who is responsible and why. What he discovers is even more unsettling. His biggest uncertainty? Why he has been allowed to live.

I’ve been looking forward to the latest Peter Cotton thriller ever since I reviewed the award winning Icelight last year. Cotton is one of those characters you’ll either warm to or won’t, there’s no middle ground but fortunately for me I’m in the camp that likes him for his quirks and his dry personality. He knows what he wants and for the most part he gets it, albeit in a roundabout and intelligent way.

Black Bear starts off slowly; our protagonist is recovering from a cocktail of life threatening drugs in a New York clinic and we discover his recovery is slow and laboured. Aly Monroe – and Peter Cotton – spend a good deal of time fighting the after affects – 120 pages in total – and I have to admit I did begin to wonder what direction the book was taking. Normally, as far as I’m concerned, reading about someone cooped up in a room hallucinating and trying to figure out why it happened and who was responsible would have been quite insular but this is where Aly Monroe excels. She kept me intrigued and held my interest throughout his stay at the Ogden Clinic thanks mainly to an engaging narrative and compelling dialogue.

Many of you, who have read any of the previous Peter Cotton books, will notice the difference in style within the first few chapters. Black Bear has a different feel to it, a slower pace to the others, more psychological and concentrating for the best part with recovery and the fascination of who attacked our intrepid spy. It’s this question that keeps Cotton focused throughout allowing Monroe to present an incredibly complex storyline, despite the fact that not much happens!

Cotton felt enormously tired, as if each word he had spoken had been bruising
his brain and he simply had no more space left for any more bruises. He could see a
kind of kaleidoscopic fracturing of colours under his eyelids. These broken bits began
to spin and melt into a single colour. It was a repulsive shade of urine and tangerine.

‘He’s screwed,’ said another American voice, one that Cotton had not heard.

‘He says he’s screwed.’

If he had been able to, Cotton would have nodded. The translation was just right enough. He passed out again on a feeling almost like relief.

Despite this sedentary start the book comes alive for me when Cotton leaves the clinic and moves to Narragansett Rhode Island and spends two months recuperating, much to the chagrin of his boss who doesn’t believe he needs this time off. I was immediately transported back in time to the late 1940’s, I absolutely adored the writing in this passage of the book and with every turn of the page I felt as if I was truly exploring every facet of life in small town America in the 1940’s. The Narragansett narrative is powerfully evocative with gossip, drama and dubious friendships and relationships – and a little spying – and Cotton soon finds out that his two months of recuperation isn’t going to go quite as planned.

There are a number of colourful characters in Narragansett each playing their part and allowing the story to evolve and move slowly forward. Cotton becomes involved with small town life in more ways than he cared to but this was one of the facets of the book that intrigued me.

Atmospheric, engrossing and intelligently written, Black Bear tantalises from the very first page until its conclusion.

[Tex Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 of 5 stars – Subtle Espionage Non-Thriller in Early Days of Cold War.
(I'm excited to have won this as a Goodreads First Read – so thanks, Jen!)

I love historical fiction and political thrillers, but this one is not what I expected or found only partially satisfying. Basically, the whole book is about the MC Cotton’s gradual recovery from being abducted and used as a drug guinea pig. I guess its subtlety is good for what it is, but it’s not an exciting story in the lines of a spy/action thriller.

While this is the first in the series that I’ve read, it’s okay as a standalone in the sense that it starts interestingly and didn’t take me long to catch up on what happened previously). However, the end was not a solid conclusion, perhaps because the story throughout was not too dramatic to reach an exciting climax. It felt like a chapter taken out of a longer story arc with a feeling of “stay tuned for further developments” in the end.

Monroe did convey some interesting aspects of the early days of the cold war, especially in terms of the espionage and relationships behind the scenes, the subtle intrigue ad maneuverings between powers. Since it was so subtle and not spelled out, it made it difficult at times to figure out what exactly was the meaning behind the words. Still, her language is descriptive of the times, and the character development was well done for the MC. Ultimately, however, the subtlety and lack of action failed to engage me – I didn’t emotionally connect to characters, it didn’t stir my feelings, and I only impartially cared about what happened.

While some readers may find this approach satisfying, this for me was not as fulfilling, but still interesting perspective and story set in the early days of the cold war.

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it hard to write this review because I wasn't really sure what I made of the book overall. In many ways it is excellent: it is well written and readable, often gripping and often both subtle and penetrating in its characters and period setting. However, it is *so* subtle and often digressive that I sometimes had the sense of just catching tiny, faint glimpses of narrative through a thick mist of character and setting which left me feeling rather rudderless and lost.

Peter Cotton is a British intelligence agent in 1947 New York. For the first 120 pages of the book he is recovering in a clinic from having been subjected to mind-altering drugs, and the remainder of the plot is largely his recuperating while trying to determine who did this to him and why. The narrative is elliptical, digressive and slow-paced which in many ways I liked, and I found the long opening in the clinic very gripping even though almost nothing really happens. In fact, the book is an awful lot of nothing really happening much of the time, most of which is fine but which does get a bit wearisome at times - especially as John le Carré's most Delphic characters seem positively forthright by comparison with with many here, so that making sense of what is going on and what is being said or not said is sometimes extremely difficult.

I have given this book four stars because I thought it well written, it was certainly tense in places and it has stayed with me in rather a haunting way, but I wouldn't want to tackle another one in the series for a while. Anyone looking for an action-packed spy thriller with a strong, clearly articulated plot should give this book a wide berth, but if you like a subtle, allusive and occasionally bewildering novel this may well be for you.

[John Xero · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is incredibly well-researched and interesting, convincingly evoking the time period (at least, as far as I can tell, not being an expert). It is intelligent and thoughtful, and has a superbly maintained low (but constant) level of tension that kept me turning pages right till the end.

In a strange way, not much happens. The main character, Peter Cotton, wakes up in hospital having been loaded up with a cocktail of hallucinogens and truth drugs. The book initially deals with his recovery (regaining his senses, his balance, and his ability to think), and then his recuperation out of town, and finally with his return to work.

A lot of the book deals with incidental characters and relationships, who (tangentially or more directly) aid Cotton in his understanding of what has happened to him, and who was responsible. But the main plot is quite understated. Cotton is not a man on mission, seeking revenge and dodging bullets, in fact I think there is only a single gunshot in the whole book, and that at a bear.

There is no 'action', it's not that kind of book, and this isn't a criticism, but I think that makes it a little less to my personal tastes.

Having said that, it is a tribute to the author's skill and craft that I didn't once lose interest in the book. I was hooked to the very end, even if the ending was less dramatic than those I am used to. It's more Greene or Le Carré than Fleming or Child. In many ways a fascinating book, and certainly an involving one.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

An English intelligence officer, Peter Cotton, is sent to New York City in 1947 in connection with the opening of the United Nations. He is drugged and left for dead. Recovering in an American clinic for traumatized veterans, he has lost his short-term memory. Unable to remember who drugged him or why, he combines his physical and mental recovery with his efforts to solving the mystery and finding his place in the games played by US, British and, perhaps, Soviet intelligence agencies in the immediate post-war world.

The book is very well written and draws the reader into the expertly crafted atmosphere of the beginnings of the Cold War. The first third of the book, which takes place in clinic, creates tension from the disorientation and confusion of Cotton and is quite compelling. Once Cotton leaves the clinic, the book becomes less of a mystery or espionage novel than a character study set against the backdrop of the emerging political and intelligence communities in post-war America. The subtle means by which Cotton deals with those behind his drugging is satisfying; but, the sometimes folksy detours the story takes and the subtlety of the meaning underlying the interactions between the various intelligence agents can at times be frustrating.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Bear is the fourth book in the Peter Cotton series. It’s quite a curious book, being somewhat compelling despite the fact that very little seems to happen. Cotton wakes in a clinic, slowly recovers, is discharged and heads away on vacation to recover, he makes friends with a couple of locals, and interacts with a couple of American and British intelligence agents. And yet, Monroe manages to make all that mundanity somehow interesting, in part by driving the story along through character development, in part by capturing the reader’s need to discover what happened to him, and in part by layering in authentic historical detail. I found the ending somewhat of anti-climax, but then the whole story is under-played, a kind of antithesis of the spills and thrills variety of spy tale. Assuming that’s partly the aim, the book succeeds admirably.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very intriguing book, set in New York in the 1940's. America was out of the war, but Britain was not, & our main character, Peter Cotton was British working on American soil. When the story opens, he is in a veterans hospital, having been injected with a cocktail of three extreme truth drugs. He takes quite some time to recuperate, & to try to regain his memory back, while at the same time he tries to reenact what happened to him in that doorway. Very suspenseful book. I had to really pay attention. I was just a bit disappointed with the ending. It kind of left me hanging.

[Iva Rothman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book through the Goodreads giveaway. Thank you.

I really wanted to like this book, but I'm sorry to say, I didn't. I started reading and just kept waiting for something. It did not hold my attention at all. I'm sad to say I didn't even finish the book. Maybe its just not my "cup of tea"? I hope others will be able to enjoy the story.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** This book was received for free through Goodreads First Reads ***

BLACK BEAR is a well-crafted, beautifully written espionage story. Progressing at a slow burn and maintaining a steady level of tension, this book will satisfy fans of the genre. Aly Monroe has delivered a thoroughly researched and enjoyable novel.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a really hard time getting into this book. Having won it on Goodreads, I felt obligated to finish. It started off interesting, but I just could not read more than 40 pages at a time and want to nod off. I realize it is not the action filled reads I am used to, but it needs to keep my attention, even so!

[Marcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won't repeat the summary. I found the story interesting at first although it was very slow. I kept waiting for it to start picking up the pace but that never happened. By the end, I felt very let down. I couldn't recommend this book. It was confusing and rather dull.

[LUCINDA HABEL · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far it has me intrigued, not my normal genre of choice, but a great read so far!

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

great read - smile