Muir’s Gambit by Michael Frost Beckner
Muir’s Gambit: A Spy Game Novel (The Aiken Trilogy Book 1) By Michael Frost Beckner
2022 WINNER, SPY THRILLER OF THE YEAR – Best Thrillers Book Awards “Relentlessly tense… This smashing espionage tale kicks off what promises to be a smart, indelible series.” Kirkus Reviews “Charged, vivid prose, electric dialogue, and an encyclopedic command of 20th-century espionage and culture keep the pages turning until a pained, satisfying ending… A chilling, inspired espionage thriller. Editor’s Choice. Publisher’s Weekly “Booklife” A prequel novel to his #1 hit motion picture, the Robert Redford/Brad Pitt thriller Spy Game, Michael Frost Beckner’s Muir’s Gambit opens with the assassination of retired CIA hero Charlie March. Mentor to Redford’s Nathan Muir, by his murder, Charlie March presents Langley the perfect opportunity to rid themselves of Cold War dinosaur Muir. Set 48 hours before the events of Spy Game, Muir’s Gambit introduces hard-luck CIA lawyer Russell Aiken dispatched to force Muir’s confession. For Aiken, it’s as much an escape as an assignment. Running from a crime of passion, he’s the protégé Muir cast aside in favor of Tom Bishop. Tormented by Muir’s denial of his ambitions, Aiken thirsts for payback, unaware that Muir launched a different game for him long ago, and he has 24 hours to learn its rules, plays, and stakes. As the two spies play at a dangerous cat-and-mouse interrogation over the dark underbelly of forty years of CIA operations, conspiracies, assassinations, and deadly secrets, Muir’s Gambit works as a dual confession by two unreliable narrators. A scathing indictment of Cold War spy games, Muir’s Gambit is also an examination of the human condition, the cost to the soul when moral men sanctioned to do the immoral have one night to regain some shred of decency before the dawn and come to terms over the one moral spy, Tom Bishop, who stands between them.