In Greg Rucka’s new novel PRIVATE WARS, Tara Chace is a top agent in the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service. She has been betrayed by her agency once, a betrayal that resulted in the death of a fellow agent, a colleague who also happened to be the father of her unborn child. Chace quits the service in order to have this child, and after the first 10 pages, the book finally starts in earnest.

After this life-shaking event, Chace is called upon to intervene in the presidential succession of Uzbekistan. One Western power wants the current president’s daughter to take over, another power wants the current president’s son, and Chace and her colleagues are caught in the middle.

Rucka presents without apology pure, unadulterated ’60s-style espionage fiction and damn, it’s good! All the usual thriller clichés are here: sexy women, spook jargon, technical details of weaponry, at least one hideous torture scene, agency politics, improbable situations and crazy plot twists. But it takes a strong storyteller to weave those clichés into a fun, readable story with characters that you like. Rucka does this well. This may be because he is a writer of renown in the world of graphic novels, penning the QUEEN & COUNTRY series for Oni Press, in which the character of Chace was introduced. This book is his second pure text novel in the world of Tara Chace (the first is A GENTLEMEN’S GAME), but if you like the characters, you’ll need to search out his graphic work as well.

And you should. His comic work seems to encourage an economy of description, realistic dialogue and a freight-train storyline that doesn’t bother (or need to bother) with the ditherings or moralizing of Le Carré and his ilk. Surprisingly refreshing and thoroughly fun and, need I say, recommended.