4.5★s
The Eighth Sister is the first book in the Charles Jenkins series by American author, Robert Dugoni. It might be forty years since Charles Jenkins left the CIA, but this sixty-four-year-old African American, now living on a Washington state farm, sticks to a fitness regimen. CJ Security, the successful business he named after his son, is currently having cash-flow problems, courtesy of a large account’s tardiness; it’s the only reason he agrees to leave his pregnant wife and nine-year-old son to go to Moscow at Carl Emerson’s request.

The problem, Carl explains, is the murder of three of the Seven Sisters, women who have been, independent of any knowledge of each other, been passing information to the CIA for the past four decades. Charlie’s Russian language skills and his client’s branch in Moscow make him the ideal person to discover the identity of the eighth sister, the person who is apparently systematically, eliminating these women. Although a two-metre black man is hardly going to be inconspicuous amongst Muscovites!

Charlie is assured by his handler that as soon as he hints at having the names of the other sisters, the eighth sister will seek him out. But when she does, it’s quickly clear they have both been fed lies. By whom, exactly, they’re not sure, but they are now both targets of Russia’s FSB, and end up together in a mad chase across Russia.

Charlie’s attempts to return home involve a fist-fight in a bathroom, an underwater swim, a rendezvous with a Turkish fishing boat, clever disguises and false passports hurriedly acquired, buses, boats and planes and, at each turn, Charlie has cause to wonder whether he will ever see his second child born.

The pace is initially fairly sedate, but once the action begins, it doesn’t let up until Charlie has followed a complicated route back to Seattle. There, dissatisfied with the outcome of his mission and the lack of resolution for the remaining sisters, he takes his concerns to a different government agency and, for his troubles, ends up in court on an espionage charge. Luckily, he has a close friend with legal expertise, but will that be enough? Excellent Dugoni spy drama.