The Better Spy

by Phyllis Anne Duncan (P. A. Duncan)

The defining mission of UN covert operative Mai Fisher's career came in the mid-1980s when she went undercover in the IRA. It was a mission she barely survived, when a shipment of Semtex she intended to destroy before the IRA would distribute it to various cells exploded too soon. Nine people, including a man she'd come to love, died, and she carried the guilt for the rest of her career. Nearly three decades later, a dying soldier has a secret he wants to tell her, one that will change everything. The telling of that secret sends Mai on a trip through her sketchy memory of that mission and its aftermath: her struggle to recover, her return to mission status, minor glitches in subsequent missions, her dependence on cocaine, her capture by the East German Stasi, and when she told her partner--and husband--she fell in love while pretending to be in the IRA.

265 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2015

About the author

P. A. Duncan is a retired bureaucrat but one with an overactive imagination--at least that's what everyone has told her since she first started making up stories in elementary school, prompted by her weekly list of spelling words.

A commercial pilot and former FAA safety official, she lives and writes in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A graduate of Madison College (now James Madison University), she has degrees in history and political science. Politics and history manage to work their way into her writing.

Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. When not reading, writing, editing, singing in a UU choir, watching the Yankees, or cheering on Dale Earnhardt, Jr., she delights in spoiling her grandchildren.

She is president emeritus of the Virginia Writers Club, one of the oldest writer organizations in the country.

Reviews

[Carol Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Better Spy by Phyllis Duncan is a novel written in linked short story format. I've never read a book formatted this way. It was easy to understand and enjoyable. Each chapter was a new part of the story. One of the great things about this formatting style is that each individual story had an incredible amount of depth to it. There was no fluff added for padding that you may find in other novels. After I had read a section I wanted nothing more than to read on. Phyllis Duncan is a sharp writer with well thought out characters and plot. The intelligence with which A Better Spy was written is refreshing. Often readers will read books that are speckled with tropes and predictable. A Better Spy is clever and engrossing.

[Betsy Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duncan's collection of stories woven into a novel takes an unusual approach to storytelling. Presented in reverse chronological order, Duncan is able to get deeper into Mai Fisher's backstory. A defining mission where Fisher is called to infiltrate the IRA, plant a bomb, and destroy a cell. The bomb explodes too soon, killing a man Fisher has come to love.

Knowledge of this mistake has left Fisher with PTSD, secrets she should but doesn't keep from her husband. A deathbed confession from a British soldier force long-hidden memories to the surface.

Duncan presents a post-Cold War tale replete with Cold War spycraft, intrigue, and tension coming from all sides.