Nobody could have predicted that a terminally ill elderly woman would set the spying world on fire. An insignificant cog in the machine, a mere archivist who, one day, told her story to her priest about how she had suspected that a long-ago unrequited love had been murdered. Finally, justice would be done. Little did that woman know that she had opened a Pandora's box of long-buried secrets, and that the hunt for a TRAITOR had been set in motion just then and there.

Readers expecting a thriller progressing at a furious pace, abounding with explosions and gunfights galore might not enjoy TRAITOR as much as I did. I have always understood spying as 90% preparation (gathering of information and talent, and planning the operations) and 10% closing the deal, or building the bomb, if you will, that culminates in the final explosion, followed by cleaning up the residual mess. This is precisely what TRAITOR consists of, and I could not have asked for a better spy novel. I was completely immersed in the story from page one, and it is no wonder that the author writes under a pseudonym. Throughout TRAITOR, I could not help but wonder if most of it had been real, if there had been an Operation Cobra, if any or all of the characters -- or even composites -- had existed.

TRAITOR differs from your typical spy novels in several ways: there isn't really one hero/heroine, although it revolves around Michael Turgeman, a spy who came out of retirement for the unofficial Operation Cobra. And he was not the only retiree! I thought it was a brilliant move, as was the overall choice of the team: young mothers, students, old- timers, and the numerous female characters are exceptionally well written! TRAITOR is meticulously structured, not one tiny detail is left to chance, and the ending was absolutely fabulous! The writing is outstanding. Mr. de Shalit's style is efficient yet elegant, and at times even lyrical. The dialogues feel authentic regardless of who is speaking, and the pace never falters. The translation is impeccable, and to my astonishment it was done by the author himself from the original Hebrew! Jonathan de Shalit has been compared to John Le Carré, with good reason; the world of TRAITOR belongs to the same category as George Smiley's. There are not many books of that caliber, TRAITOR is exactly the sort of spy novel I crave, and I am already most eagerly awaiting Mr. de Shalit's next novel!