“We're told that there are no new stories. But the world creates opportunities for new stories every single day. It's not just the ever-changing technology, though that certainly helps. What happens is more fundamental. As technology changes our relationships change, not just to the technology, but also to one another. Yes, we all know about virtual friends; that are already old. The relationships between parents and children, between fathers and sons are undergoing constant change. As we live longer, and are required to work longer, fathers and sons can find themselves on a level playing field. Until somebody blows it up.

Charlie Clark is an unremarkable man, in most ways. Other than his ability to lose money at the track, that is. He's got a real talent for that. His father, Drummond, is even more forgettable—and alas, now, "forgetful." He wanders away from his bleak, barren Brooklyn apartment and can't find his way home. He can "remember" his career as an appliance salesman. Charlie gets the call to pick him up, and then, things start blowing up. No, it's not Charlie's Russian creditors. Turns out, it's Drummond's past that has come back to hunt, not haunt him. And Drummond's past is not quite so bland as he's led his son to believe.

I'd recommend picking up Once A Spy (Doubleday/Random House; March 9, 2010; $24.95) by Keith Thomson and dipping right in, bypassing the spoiler-ific dust jacket and "Product Descriptions." I like my spy thrillers cold, and Once A Spy is as cold as they come, but with a warm sense of honest family dishonesty and violent sense of humor. But driving the novel is a great, and to my mind, innovative new spin on the father and son relationship. For all the ancillary canon fodder, the ticking-time-bomb plot and the derring-do, Once A Spy is really a great book about getting to know your father under circumstances that were really not possible until this moment in history.

After all, it is only now that we know what can happen with Alzheimer's disease, and terrorism, as we know it now, is chock full of potential destruction. That there should be a connection between these two facts is not at all obvious, but Thomson finds a way to put a father and son through a wringer designed by Rube Goldberg for a gritty James Bond movie. Once A Spy is a wonderfully fun novel of discovery, matching explosive apartments with explosive revelations.

Thomson does a very nice job of keeping things personal and writing what is really a two-few novel with a lot of collateral damage. For all the revelations, violence and pursuits, this is a taut father-son dialogue about truth, lies and responsibility. Thomson's twist, putting the responsibility where it has apparently been vacuumed away, is a great way into both a spy novel and a novel of reconciliation. It's a new world out there—and if you look, there are new stories to be told.”

—Rick Kleffel :: bookotron.com