Michael Lockhart, The Secret of Fire, (2026)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8585695785
Caucasus black ops flops
Following a hilarious Victory Parade fiasco, the President of the republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia Victor Azarov hires Annie Jordan as a PR rep. She is secretly ‘dying inside’, mourning the death of her 4 year old son. MI6 Agent Martin Locke wants to promote this arrangement to undermine regional stability and ‘keep Russia feudal’.
There is ethnic strife in the North Caucasus republic, between Azarov’s Karachai and the Cherkess, led by Alibek Ismail-Zade and possibly a secret extremist organisation. The contention is mostly over the Russian invasion of 1849-61 and the Cherkess’ accusations that the Karachai had sold them down the river.
The ancient rivalry is played out on the modern stage of television and PR, which is quite funny. Annie knows her stuff about photo ops, but the entrenched history of the region is beyond her ken. British and Russian intervention have, of course, disastrous consequences.
The Plot is serious, but there are some humorous elements, as apparatchiks fiercely defend their little patches and rehearse their ancient prejudices. Locke and his Russian counterpart Tarasov are spooks of the old order from the ‘glory days’ of the Cold War, who look amusingly old-fashioned.
The author has a great feel and understanding of the time (1999) and place, but I wondered about the structure. It’s largely communiqués to and from Locke and others and excerpts from Annie’s journal, leaving me confused as to whose story this is.
This approach does, however, lend a certain distance between the audience and the characters, making all of them, in fact, into possibly unreliable narrators. I found that fascinating. We don’t know whether Azarov is a Hero Of Our Time or a villain. Is Locke a drunken bumbler, or is he surreptitiously accomplishing his black ops mission?
This is a light-hearted peek inside a Russian republic without the darkness of Russian literature.
Susie Helme 
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