TRIÁNGULO DE ESPÍAS
(SPYTRIANGEL)
The mysterious murder of a young Russian woman in Stockholm spikes an operational alert at Säpo (Swedish Security/ Counterintelligence/ Counterterrorism police). However, the first step from Säpo is an attempt to lay a smoke screen around the crime. Stig Bohman, a Counterintelligence Officer at Säpo, is responsible for obstructing the police work initiated by Police Commissioner Gunnar Jansson and his assistant Anna Palmqvist. What could be the reason behind Säpo’s obstructionist effort? While the Swedish media is referring to the murdered girl as “merely an Eastern European prostitute,” it turns out that, in reality, she is the daughter of Alvaro Espinosa, a Colonel with the Cuban Intelligence, who is willing to defect in Europe and sell highly classified information regarding the Cuban regime, in exchange for political asylum.
From this enticing prelude on, Spy Triangle wisely unfolds a vibrant and shifting plot of loyalties and disloyalties. The doubts and indecisions of the Swedish and North American governments serve to heighten the tension and complicate the action. Doubts from the Swedes have to do with their reticence to see themselves involved in an obscure stratagem of international espionage. The Americans, meanwhile, don’t want to roil the imminent reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba.
In Spy Triangle, Cuban-Swedish writer H.L. Guerra retakes the protagonists of The Traitor from Prague, his well-received previous novel that the Miami Herald regarded as “a Spanish language milestone of the espionage genre.” As such, twenty years later, Javier Püig is reunited in Havana with his old friend, Cuban double-agent Mario Paredes. Even though both men are by now retired, a serious national security threat, involving a desperate CIA attempt, becomes the cause behind their sudden reactivation in what unfolds as a complex network of political intrigue.
Spy Triangle manages to thrust us in the middle of an elaborate and exciting three-way game in which the questionable behavior of agents from the intelligence services of Cuba, the United States, and even North Korea, produce acts that expose the murky realities of foreign policy and allow us to see mind-bending episodes in which countries like the United States, Sweden, or Spain fight against the illegal sale of weapons, the Russian mafia or a possible nuclear threat from a communist regime.
H.L. Guerra’s Spy Triangle is a vibrant and gripping story that captivates the reader by its verisimilitude from its opening to its last page.
Book reviews
Librotea, the Spanish newspaper El País book blog recommends ”Tríangulo de espías” Spy triangle, as one of the top 10 new spy novels about North Korea and ISIS. I am in good company surrounded by Daniel Silva ”The English Spy” and John Le Carré ”The Most Wanted Man”.
The Miami Herald (Review)
By Manuel C. Díaz
Spy Triangle is a great espionage novel. I cannot find a better way to describe it. It is written meticulously, as an artisan, and in its plot, despite tackling complex issues like the illegal sale of weapons to terrorist countries, there are no loose ends. In the end, thanks to an unexpected plot twist, all pieces fall into place, and all in the context of a plot involving the intelligence services of Cuba, North Korea and the United States. With this novel, H.L Guerra has once again demonstrated, as he did in The Traitor from Prague, that spies do not have to emerge from the cold. They can come from the heat of the tropics. Actually, they are already doing it. After all, they are only ninety miles from us.
http://www.elnuevoherald.com/vivir-mejor/artes-letras/article114179168.html
Miami Book Fair International 2016
On Thursday, November 19, 2016, H.L. Guerra presented with great success his new novel Spy Triangle, the second entry of the trilogy that begun with The Traitor from Prague, at The Miami Book Fair.
