City on the Edge

April 1, 2021
As tensions between Israel and Palestine ratchet up following the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, a 12-year-old American boy living in Beirut slowly discovers what his mysterious father is really up to. The boy is Graham. His father works for the State Department, in what capacity he won't say. Their family arrives in Beirut in the spring of 1972, having previously lived in Mexico City for four years. Exploring the new terrain with his two American friends, Graham discovers endless ways to get into trouble, including wandering out into a sandstorm and confronting a sullen, rock-tossing local boy. Life changes dramatically when, near the boys' play fort, Graham witnesses the killing of a Middle Eastern man by an American. His father, in whose satchel the boy was shocked to find a gun ("Was he a spy?"), responds gravely to news of the death. People start showing up at their apartment door at all hours, among them a man from the embassy with a healed bullet hole in his face. Curfews are called, "little pops" and explosions are heard in the near distance, and the boys are told to sleep on the floor. Meanwhile, the stern Presbyterian father and alcoholic Jewish mother wage their own war. Told by the adult Graham, who becomes a cop like Swinson did, the novel occasionally gets caught between a coming-of-age story and a mystery. But this stand-alone follow-up to Swinson's Frank Marr mysteries--most recently Trigger (2019)--unfolds with cool understatement and entertaining period details (prepare for an onslaught of Jethro Tull) and builds to a satisfying climax. An absorbing take on Middle East conflict as seen through the eyes of an American boy.

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April 15, 2021
For thriller fans, the highlight of this curious blend of crime fiction and coming-of-age novel will likely be a conversation between a CIA agent and a murderer. It's a terse, understated exchange. The agent simply makes a series of innocuous statements, and the truth comes out as the suspect reacts to them. It's a stunning and thoroughly gripping scene. City on the Edge is billed as a thriller, but it's not at all like the author's salty 2019 novel Trigger. It's set in 1974 Beirut, a city close to the Israeli border, and the narrator is 13-year-old Graham Sanderson, an American boy who's learning about life in a world of dirty doings between Mossad and the PLO. His father is a newly assigned foreign-service attach�, and his mother is an alcoholic who disappears from the narrative early on. There are flashes of action, but they're mostly backdrops to the boy's growing realization that things are not what they seem. The narrator is sensitively drawn, and the setting is vividly rendered in a novel that will draw those looking for a character study more than a thriller.

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