The Lost Americans

January 30, 2023
At the start of this smoothly written if somewhat slow literary thriller from Bollen (A Beautiful Crime), Eric Castle, who works for a high-powered American defense contractor manufacturing state-of-the-art weapons and armaments, returns one afternoon to his hotel in Cairo. That night, he takes a fatal fall from his hotel room’s third-floor balcony. In the morning, a hotel porter discovers his body on the pavement; the authorities rule his death a suicide. Meanwhile in New York City, Eric’s sister, Cate Castle, has just broken up with her boyfriend when she hears the bad news about him. Certain that her brother didn’t die by suicide, Cate travels to Cairo, where she enlists the help of an Egyptian friend of a friend, Omar, to follow up on clues Eric sent her shortly before his death. Soon she’s up to her neck in danger and intrigue, and it’s uncertain whether she and Omar will make it out alive. Bollen does a good job capturing the atmosphere of Cairo while exploring the personalities and experiences of his main characters, but he does so at the expense of pace and action. Readers in search of page-turning adventure may be tempted to skim this one.

March 1, 2023
After Cate Castle's brother, Eric, plunges from his hotel balcony, Cairo's police cite the testimony of Eric's erratic behavior given by his fellow weapons contractors to justify their suicide ruling. Unconvinced, and perhaps guilt-stricken by their strained relationship, Cate arranges a second autopsy in the U.S., which finds solid evidence of murder. Eric's employer, Polestar, responds with a huge settlement that's contingent on the Castles' silence and backed by an unmistakable threat to destroy Eric's reputation. Uncowed, Cate flies to Cairo to investigate Polestar's culpability, drawing Omar, the nephew of an acquaintance, into her dangerous quest. For Omar, this may be the risk that breaks the camel's back: he's already hiding his sexual identity to avoid President Sisi's brutal morality sweeps. A bold plot twist bolsters the story's gritty realism, revealing that the villainy behind Eric's death shields a lot of human complexity. Bollen, known for setting thrillers in alluring locales, skillfully captures Cairo's beauty and palpable tension, and Cate and Omar's courage in facing hard truths gives this memorable thriller extra frisson.

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Starred review from January 15, 2023
Following the sudden death of her brother, Eric, in Cairo, where he was working as a weapons technician for a "boutique" defense firm, New York fundraiser Cate Castle sets out to prove he did not kill himself. Official word is that Eric was drunk, depressed, and delusional when he tossed himself off the third-floor balcony of his hotel. Cate, knowing in her heart that he would never kill himself, goes to Egypt to chase down the truth, prompted by a mysterious postcard from him. In Cairo, she immediately gets a whiff of the danger she is in when a young man posing as her airport driver attempts to abduct her. In due course, she learns that Eric was caught in the middle of a secret weapons deal. When his firm, Polestar, offers Cate's needy mother and ailing stepfather in Massachusetts a sizable settlement, she reluctantly gives in to demands that she sign a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting her from airing her grievances or questioning Polestar employees. But acting on impulse, sure she is getting close to what happened, she continues her investigation--under the watchful eye of authoritarian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's secret police. Cut from the same mold as Robert Stone's great political thrillers with its international intrigue, darkly atmospheric setting, and compromised characters, Bollen's novel is afloat in self-recrimination. "We used to sell weapons to fight wars," says a disillusioned former colleague of Eric's. "Now we fight wars to sell weapons." The scarcity of civil rights in contemporary Egypt is captured to shadowy effect, extending to the targeting of gay citizens like Cate's guide and driver, Omar. Bollen, author of Lightning People (2011) and Orient (2015), takes real risks with the story, making it more haunting than the reader may be prepared for. A gripping thriller with lingering emotional effects.

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