The Double Game

The Double Game
by Dan Fesperman

I've been looking for books for my more advanced readers in the eighth grade.  They don't have an appetite for the dystopian literature their peers are so crazy about.  They do love books set in Europe with at least a little intrigue.  In reviewing book summaries, The Double Game stood out as a possible choice.  It is categorized as an espionage-thriller.  I was drawn to it because books take center stage in the plot.

The novel digs into the possibility of double agents during the Cold War. Journalist Bill Cage, while interviewing an ex-CIA agent turned author of spy thrillers, discovers that he was once enticed by the world of the double agent.  The story gets out of the the young Cage's control, and he finds that he must leave the paper.

Jump forward twenty years and we find Cage lonely and unsatisfied with his life.  We learn that he is the son of an employee of the CIA and lived all over the world during his childhood.  We also learn that he and his father love the world of the spy novel.  Through a series of surprising events, that include the delivery of actual pages of his beloved novels, Cage is lured into a hunt that will reveal whether the information he tripped onto during that long ago interview is indeed true.

Though written for adults, this is a novel that any accomplished high school reader will love.  It concentrates on plot, character, and setting, leaving romance and unnecessary drama to other novels.  It is also a great introduction to politics during the Cold War, an era I knew surprisingly little about.  I will be looking for more historical fiction from this time period, and if it contains a thrill or two, all the better.