Published 21st January 2021 by Verve Books.
From the cover of the book:
New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.
An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.
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I don't think I have ever read anything quite like this book before. It's unusual in that it is equal parts coming-of-age story and 1960's espionage thriller, with both parts of the novel standing up loud and proud in their own right, each asking the same question - who is Vera Kelly?
Vera's tale is told in two timelines, one playing out her domestic history in the USA starting in 1957 and ending when she goes off to South America to begin her career as a CIA operative, and the other telling the story of her year long mission in Buenos Aires from January 1966. The timelines swap back and forth in alternate chapters, until her past history collides with the present.
The domestic part of the novel is where the coming-of-age part comes in. When we first meet her in her hometown of Chevy Chase, Maryland it is clear her life is in turmoil. She is struggling with her sexual identity and a very difficult relationship with her mother, and a drug overdose which may or not not be a failed suicide bid sets her on a rocky path that eventually leads to life among the gay scene in 1962 Greenwich Village, working night shifts as a technician at a radio station. Although she acknowledges her sexual preference for women, she is unable to settle into life in the big city, especially since she cannot live openly as a gay woman at this time. Her technical skills get her noticed by a CIA recruiter, and the romantic lure of the life of a spy - and the very attractive pay cheque that comes with it - is too much for her to resist, so she embarks on a new career in the world of espionage.
Vera's early missions mainly comprise translator sort of roles, but then she is offered to undertake something much more complex, and dangerous, in Buenos Aires - wiretapping politicians and infiltrating a group of young student radicals. And it is this part of the story that gives us the full-on CIA espionage tale experience when January 1966 finds her masquerading as Canadian student Anne Patterson, while secretly spying on the local bigwigs and her fellow scholars - a role which may have gone without too many hiccups were it not for political upheaval, a coup and the need to escape capture after an act of betrayal.
Even though it sounds quite odd, playing an emotion-heavy coming-of-age chronicle against a hard-edged spy story works incredibly well. Of course, these sides of the novel offer some pretty big contrasts in style and content, but there are similarities that can be teased out of them too - and essentially, they both centre on assuming false identities and avoiding detection, and the thread of Vera's romantic entanglements is ever present.
Rosalie Knecht handles each and every part of this novel with sophisticated flair, with intriguing shades of Patricia Highsmith. She manages to write convincingly of the life of a young gay woman in 1960's New York and that of a CIA spy in the midst of a steaming political morass in South America, which takes some doing. Vera comes across beautifully as a strong, smart, witty, capable woman, subversive on more than one front, and with manifold charms. There are moments of deep emotion, high tension, humour and terror that draw you in completely.
There are some intriguing themes that come up in the telling of this tale too. An obvious one is the thread of sexuality and the need to hide in plain sight, but there are also some lovely strains about the role of women; patriotism; and playing at politics, especially by the upper middle classes - and underlying it all is the pervading sense that the entire novel is about fear of various kinds.
I absolutely adored this book and its fire-cracker of a protagonist. I cannot wait to read Vera's next adventure, Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery, which is coming very soon!
Who Is Vera Kelly? is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer.
Thank you to Hollie McDevitt from Oldcastle Boks for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
She lives in New Jersey.
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