Many years ago, 2004 to be exact, I was an occasional author escort (this is when the big publishers toured authors for readings or talks, often all across the country) and one of my jobs was to drive a thriller/espionage writer named Dan Fesperman to a bookstore to discuss his third novel, The Warlord’s Son, somewhere in the Bay area – it’s fuzzy which one. It also happened to be a debate night during the presidential election when John Kerry was running against incumbent George Bush. Interest was high, and unsurprisingly, the reading was … a bust. But Dan and I got on well and possibly went out for dim sum after the (non)event.
Cut to mid-July of this year when I read a review of Dan’s latest novel, Pariah. I contacted Dan, and rather than simply review his new book, I asked him if we could do an interview.
Pariah is set in an imaginary eastern European country, Bolrovia, with an authoritarian, strongman ruler. The CIA wants what the CIA always wants: information, and in what may be a hare-brained scheme, recruits a newly disgraced American comedian/actor turned politician turned pariah named Hal Prince to infiltrate the upper echelons of the Bolrovian government. Why Hal? Two reasons: he has little to do but lick his wounds, having been a likely sexual harasser, and our dictator, Nicolai Horvatz loves his films and his alleged comedic persona. With no other purpose in life, Hal agrees to the CIA plan, and after some vague training, he’s dropped into a land of intrigue – and paranoia.
In a recent interview via email, Fesperman discussed spy fiction, his own background as a reporter and how that informs his work today. I also wanted to ask him about one particular and seemingly very prescient scene in Pariah.
In a crowded bar, filled with an assortment of liars, operatives and questionable hangers-on, two charmers from “Wolf News” encounter Hal. One, an aggressive woman who zeroes in on Hal’s crotch, and the other, a sexist jerk who cozies up to Hal and proceeds to bash the “pussy leftist reviewers [who] beat you down.” Hal, culture-cancelled victim, oh how mean they’ve been to you!
When I came to this passage, I laughed out loud, because it was a déjà vu moment as the whole Jimmy Kimmel suspension for offending the MAGA crowd had just gone down. I asked Dan how he was so dead on, because this scene was the same kind of perspective we saw so recently, with a glaring reversal: it was a right-winger criticizing the “media” for cancelling Hal, instead of what actually went on.
Dan Fesperman: Well, thank you, but I probably got lucky with some of that, seeing as how the book is set in 2023. But you’re right, it does feel oddly timely given where we’ve ended up. I do remember that after the 2024 election, when I’d already completed my first draft, one of my first thoughts was, “Oh, shit, guess I’ll have to make some changes to reflect the political reality,” but I quickly realized the manuscript needed minor tweaks to only two or three sentences to help account for the possibility of what was coming. As for the Kimmel stuff, I fear we’re only in for more of the same — further repression, further head-hunting of those who dare to speak or write against the Leader, and, if we’re lucky, further backlash from the public in reaction to it.
So, what does Fesperman think about the current crop of espionage novels – do they reflect today’s (nightmare) political environment?
DF: I’m not seeing a whole lot of contemporary American politics turning up in today’s espionage fiction, partly because the politics keep shifting so dramatically rightward that you’d have to be clairvoyant to keep pace. Even then, by the time you’d finished and edited a manuscript you’d probably be hopelessly behind the curve, or would have guessed wrongly on some key points.
PH: In some of your books, you discuss in the Afterword what true life events play a role in the novel. I’ve had writers tell me they don’t really know what will happen in the book until they start writing, and others who have planned it out fromstart to finish…which one are you?
DF: It’s different with every book. I almost always have a vague idea of an ending, at least in terms of the fate of the main characters, but charting their way forward is a mystery until I begin creeping past the opening pages. If you think of the plot as an alphabet, I generally begin by knowing A and Z and maybe five or six other letters. A few times maybe I know ten other letters. Or maybe only two or three. Sometimes I do a lot of outlining. Other times I set out with hardly any plan, moving “organically,” as an old editor of mine once described it, depending on how the characters are emerging.
PH: We see an increasing number of female protagonists in spy novels these days. One of your most endearing characters is CIA agent Claire Saylor, who has appeared in three consecutive books, Safe Houses (2018), The Cover Wife (2021) and Winter Work (2022). What’s it like to write such women? And have/do women play significant roles in the espionage world?
DF: They do, partly because even a male-dominated organization like the CIA came to realize that women tend to see things men don’t, or can gain access to places and parts of a society that men can’t. Chatting with women who’ve worked with the CIA has certainly helped me gain a better understanding of how they survive and prosper in that world, and has helped shape the point of view of my female characters. But I’ve also discovered lots of great material in declassified CIA documents that has illuminated all of those things for previous eras.
PH: Will you bring back Claire? I was very taken with her!
DF: Claire quickly insinuated her way from minor character to sidekick as I was writing Safe Houses, so obviously I like her as well. She then promoted herself to main character in The Cover Wife, before doubling back a few years to be the co-lead in Winter Work. I certainly wouldn’t count her out for a later appearance, although at the moment I have no immediate plans for her. Impossible to say.
PH: When I interviewed Paul Vidich for Beirut Station, he said he did extensive historical research for ideas (although his new book, The Poet’s Game, is not based on factual events). How do you get your ideas? One aspect, of many, that I really enjoy about your work is that the books are all over the map – literally but figuratively also. The Letter Writer, (2016) set in 1940s New York City, is a wonderful departure from Russia, DC and Berlin! (Not that those places don’t lend themselves to endless inventions.)
DF: My ideas come from all over the place as well, literally and figuratively, and they usually occur to me when I’m not looking for one. They always strike while I’m still working on something else. The Double Game (2012) was inspired by a British newspaper’s interview with John le Carre in which, according to the headlines, he supposedly admitted he’d once considered becoming a double agent for the Russians (although the truth of the matter, in his actual quotes, turned out to be something subtler and much less sensational). The Cover Wife came from my fascination with the runup to the 9/11 plot among a cell of al Qaeda pilgrims in Hamburg. Winter Work grew out of my imaginings of what life must have been like for Stasi spies after their world collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was something I began pondering while living in Berlin in 1993, even though I didn’t begin the novel until more than 25 years later. In the case of The Letter Writer, set in Manhattan during the Second World War, I probably never would have written that if my wife hadn’t landed a one-year fellowship at Columbia University in 2012. By living up there for a year I more easily slipped into the right frame of mind, and, practically speaking, had easy access to so many archives that were instrumental for researching that book. So, I took the plunge.
PH: It seems to me that most spy/espionage novels are in the end about one form or another of redemption. Would you agree? Pariah sure had a redemptive ending…
DF: Well, in the sense that most of them are also about betrayal, or compromised loyalties, I suppose that redemption would often follow naturally, although oftentimes the redemption has to do with characters trying to rise above a system that had come to define them. And even then it’s often a hollow or even fatal redemption. In The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, for instance, Alec Leamas pays with his life for a final (and futile) act of redemption, and the fellow who despairingly watches him die, George Smiley, is feeling anything but redeemed.
PH: And finally, to what extent have your years overseas as a reporter informed your novels?
DF: My three years in Berlin came at a fairly pivotal time — 1993 to 96, when Germany was still struggling through the growing pains of reunification, and, at least initially, East Germany still looked a great deal like it had during the Cold War. That steeped me in a deep sense of the place, which I can readily reactivate with a return trip for more research, or even by flipping back through the pages of my old notebooks. The scent of coal smoke and the bite of those Berlin winters creeps right off the pages. My dozen or so trips to the Balkans during the wars of that era certainly shaped me in other ways, mostly by letting me witness the ways in which war shapes character, or, more to the point, the way in which war often reveals character. Testing someone to that extreme tends to bring out the best or the worst in someone… The results can be appalling. They can also be inspiring. Additionally, living abroad gives you a much clearer and deeper perspective on your own country. Once you’ve seen the way the rest of the world sees us, your own view is changed forever.
Peter Handel has been writing about crime fiction since the early 1990s. His reviews, interviews, and profiles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Portland Oregonian, Pages Magazine, Mystery Reader’s Journal, The Rap Sheet and CrimeReads. Join his Substack here.
