Lead Review

• Book: Odesa at Dawn
• Location: Odesa
• Author: Sally McGrane

Review Author: Tina Hartas

“As befits any book set in Odesa, Sally McGrane’s smart new thriller bristles with dark humour, slinking along and zigzagging through its plot like one of the city’s streetwise felines. Come for the story, but don’t forget to take in the sights”

The author really brings to life this crumbling city, that often feels like an amalgam of East and West – European architecture is melded with Soviet concrete blocks, built over catacombs that are the result of stone mining (coquina) and that sometimes are not sufficiently robust to support the buildings above.

This is a curious take on the traditional spy thriller and it is Le Carré-esque in many ways. Ex CIA agent Max is in Odesa on a routine assignment but the discovery of a severed hand in a barrel of sunflower oil is just the start of a new and potentially dangerous adventure, especially when he himself stumbles across a severed toe, with the same markings (resembling the outline of Florida) as the hand.

Then, imagine a flock of felines – reminiscent of Top Cat and his team on TV – who probably are one step ahead and could so easily solve Max’s problems. Add in lots of intrigue and you have a very quirky story. It is overall an “affectionate portrait of a complex and fascinating city“. For me, I sometimes found it a little fractured and intense, with a lot of characters passing through the pages, which made it a touch confusing and hard to follow. But its unique premise triumphs and it feels really important to be familiarising myself with this part of the world – in whatever way I can – at this particular moment.

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