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Nickless's new novel is The Drowning Game.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry. This debut novel exploded onto the literary world, quickly scooping up acknowledgements as diverse as MysteryVisit Barbara Nickless's website.Writers of America’s Edgar Award and a New Yorker Best Book of the Year. The prose leaps off the page, but it’s in world-weary CIA spy Shane Collins that we find the dark heart of any honest book on spydom: spying takes a terrible toll on its practitioners. Collins has become an alcoholic burnout just as the monarchy of Bahrain (an island country in the Persian Gulf) is under attack by Iran through their proxies (sound familiar?). Berry has real-world experience of Bahrain and the CIA, and this knowledge shines through. Bonus: Learning about a Middle Eastern country you might not have heard of and seeing it vividly portrayed through the eyes of the poverty-doomed locals, the jaded expat community, and in the glittering beaches, skyscrapers, and palaces of royalty and the well-to-do.
The Page 69 Test: At First Light.
Q&A with Barbara Nickless.
The Page 69 Test: Play of Shadows.
--Marshal Zeringue