Spy thriller set in ODESA

5th October 2022

Odesa at Dawn by Sally McGrane, spy thriller set in ODESA.

“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” (VQ Books)

Odesa is a port on the Black Sea which is still in Ukrainian hands, and lately has been in the news frequently as grain shipments out of the port have been of strategic importance in the conflict initiated by Russia. (By the way, in Russian, it is Odessa, so it feels important to spell it Odesa, as per Ukrainian). There has certainly been considerable Russian influence in this area, and its modern incarnation (overlaying a Greek settlement) was founded by a decree of the Russian Empress, Catherine the Great. Since Ukraine gained independence, the city is firmly Ukrainian with a proportion of the population speaking Russian. The push pull of Russian influence in the area is detailed in the novel.

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 a squawking parrot, some axolotls (no, I hadn’t heard of them either but apparently they can lose and then regrow body parts 😬) and 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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