The New Neighbor - It's a Cozy Spy Thriller?

The New Neighbor - Karen Cleveland

If, like me, you read a lot of mystery and thriller novels; you’re well aware of the subgenre of “cozy” mysteries: a protagonist, usually female, stumbles over dead bodies (always free of gore) in the everyday course of business. Cooking is a favorite profession, so are crafting and bookselling. It’s a classic case of willing suspension of disbelief – after all, Crabapple Cove, Maine, is unlikely to have a higher murder rate than Chicago, Bogotá, or Mogadishu. Even with that in mind, though, today’s book is a new subgenre for me; something I call the "cozy spy thriller." Meet Beth Bradford, heroine of Karen Cleveland‘s fourth novel, The New Neighbor.

Beth’s nest is suddenly empty: the last of her three kids is off to college, the Bradfords have closed the sale on their suburban cul-de-sac home, and – wouldn't you know it – hubby Mike has split to live with the stereotypical hot young secretary. Cliché much, Mikey? Worst of all, when Beth returns to the CIA office from which she’d spent the last couple of decades chasing an Iranian spymaster and his wily U S asset, “The Neighbor,” she learns that she’s been locked out and sent offsite to teach analysis to newbie agents. What a let-down…

Unable to drop the search that had consumed her for so many years, Beth worms her way back into the data and learns that the spy recruiter apparently lives on her old cul-de-sac in MacLean. Desperate to solve the case, she goes rogue; uncovering former neighbors she considered friends who’ve been “turned.” Neighbor by neighbor, she uncovers a dastardly plot that would cripple the agency… all the while getting ever closer to the real Neighbor. Will she find the culprit in time to save the day? Will she be shocked by the revelation? Yes, and yes. Of course.

Cleveland, herself a retired CIA analyst, concocted an incursion into the CIA’s inner workings worthy of a scriptwriter for “Mission Impossible,” a fragile network of remotely-controlled activities that would require some sort of clairvoyance to construct. With one's disbelief suspended, however, it’s an ingenious plot. Bradford’s methodology of uncovering that plot, unfortunately, is more hit-or-miss.

It’s almost painful to watch the woman work house by house up her old street, finding every one of her former neighbors (all of whom work at the CIA in some capacity or other) has been turned by The Neighbor. Some have been blackmailed, most have been given stacks of cash over lo, these many years. 

Cleveland’s plot ultimately disintegrates in a couple of details. First, The Neighbor was originally turned by the bad guys for lying to the CIA on a routine background check. The lie, frankly, was about a fact that The Company should have known about before even asking a question. Second, the CIA knew The Neighbor was on Beth’s cul-de-sac because of an attempt to turn yet another neighbor with a video of him stumbling around drunk. In the video, the subject says, “Well hi, neighbor!” but can’t remember who was filming him. Yeah, sure. 

Last, in order to construct what has to be described as an elegant plan to crawl inside the CIA’s computer network, someone needed to know not just the departments where Beth’s neighbors worked but also their physical locations and small details of the building’s infrastructure. It seems to me that the operation had to be controlled by someone well up the food chain at Langley; something Bradford (and Cleveland) never seemed to consider.

Overall, I thought the Mission Impossible plot was well-thought out, but the plot holes I mentioned above really dragged down my score. As a result, Cleveland’s latest just gets an average score from me, three stars out of five.

[NOTE:  I received an ARC of The New Neighbor in exchange for my honest review.]

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