From the Bookshelf of SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group…

Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey, #3)

David Hagberg

Why we're reading this: Book 3. Begins in Paris with the KGB sending a man to murder the station chief, his deputy and destroy th…more
[close] Book 3. Begins in Paris with the KGB sending a man to murder the station chief, his deputy and destroy the American Embassy In Paris. It ends with a plot to destroy an Iranian rapprochement with the USA.

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Sep 04, 2013 Samuel rated it liked it

CROSSED OUT

[3.5 stars rounded down to three]

David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey series. At times dated, the series is the melodramatic, slightly nuttier cousin of Tom Clancy. Book 3 in the series continues to showcase the best and worst popular tropes of spy thriller fiction, some of them still prevalent today while others have thankfully be hounded into the shadows never to return. Now to the review. What happens when an assassin just wants to get even?

We kick the book off with perhaps the best pa CROSSED OUT

[3.5 stars rounded down to three]

David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey series. At times dated, the series is the melodramatic, slightly nuttier cousin of Tom Clancy. Book 3 in the series continues to showcase the best and worst popular tropes of spy thriller fiction, some of them still prevalent today while others have thankfully be hounded into the shadows never to return. Now to the review. What happens when an assassin just wants to get even?

We kick the book off with perhaps the best part of the book. A man claiming to be the main character infiltrates the American Embassy in Paris. He makes sure to be noticed by security and personnel. We find out that it is in fact our old pal Arkady Kurshin from the KGB who survived a knife through the chest in Countdown. Getting to a key area of the embassy, he begins planting bombs around certain support struts and along with way, finds time to murder the CIA's Paris Station Chief. We then cut to the main character who finds one of his legion of lovers is waiting for him at his apartment. This love interest is in fact a case officer sent to monitor him and hasn't fooled him in the slightest. As he dumps her, she reveals that a man impersonating him visited the Paris Embassy. Heading there, just as Kurshin manages to exfiltrate, he's just in time for the fireworks. From there, a series of strange events lead to him being framed for the bombing and getting pulled into a plot by the KGB to sabotage a potential Iranian American diplomatic overture involving gold bullion.

PLOT:
More complex than Countdown. Some of it is actually pretty decent but there is one part which is highly irritating and is ultimately fruitless. It involves a Nazi gold treasure-hunt and detracts heavily from the much more engaging Europe-Iran plot and belongs more in the 1960's and 70's rather than a spy thriller of the 1990's. Hagberg's writing style is still pretty serviceable in this one but don't expect any vivid settings which an author like Ben Coes can give to you. The dialogue is also even more corny than in the previous book. To paraphrase Harrison Ford's verdict on the writing skills of George Lucas, "you can write this S*** but you sure as hell can't read it."

CHARACTERS:
Much worse than Countdown. The beginnings of the contempt and loathing the top brass of the CIA had for the main character in the previous book has grown into a full-blown grudge. The fact that they believe McGarvey's CIA officer lover has been compromised by her feelings and is trying to cover for him does not help matters. It's stupid, ludicrous, misogynistic to the extreme and thankfully would never happen in this day and age.
Next, there is Kirk himself. Still a passive aggressive sexist womanizer but for once, the passive aggressiveness works in his favor. While everyone loses their heads, this time around he approaches the stuff that happens in the book more dispassionately than in the last book. However it does not make him likable and the character still embodies the worst cliché's of spy fiction which have come into disuses as of 2015.
Next, there is the annual token love interest. Hagberg in his early days really portrayed his female characters in such a cringe-worthy manner. Her name is Maria and she's an Argentinian-German who is in fact an asset of Mossad. Her characterization jumps all over the place. At times she's your classic "hysterical woman/conquest", at others, she's irrational and borderlines psychotic and causes more problems than she solves. Her back-story would have been sympathetic but instead comes off as lurid and has less impact than the author would have wanted. I breathed a sigh of relief when she departs from the book.
Finally, we have Arkady Kurshin. The vacation in Syria did him some good. He's even more awesome than the last time we saw him with a pretty impressive scheme to ruin the main character's life, a scheme which annoyingly got cut short (After Paris, he planned to do repeat performances in America's southern European embassies, something that would have made a better plot-line than that damn Nazi-gold). It's also quite fun to see the deterioration of his sanity and towards the end of the book, he's a laughing nut-case. One who still makes the most of his training in his final dance with McGarvey.

Overall, Cross Fire can be seen as a cautionary tale of the danger of missed opportunities in spy thriller writing. If the book had revolved more around a conspiracy to destroy the Iranian-American rapprochement, this story would have been considered ahead of its time. Instead, it's just espionage pulp fiction, nothing more, nothing less embodying all the best and worst tropes of contemporary spy fiction. ...more

Like · see review

Mar 28, 2011 Mark rated it liked it

Shelves: political-thriller, spy-thriller

Kirk McGarvey must stop the remade KGB from stealing gold to refinance their initiatives...a fun read as McGarvey travels around the world blocking their efforts...good ol' "Cold War" spy melodrama reading!!! ...more

Like · see review