White Hot Silence

The novels of political journalist Henry Porter have always been prescient as well as insightful in a manner that helps reveal what lies under the veneer of our reality, as they provoke deep thought. His latest is no exception, featuring Paul Samson the muscularly realised protagonist from Firefly.

In his first outing, the former MI6 agent turned Private Eye, Paul Samson was tasked by the security services to track down a 13-year-old Syrian refugee named Naji, but code-named Firefly. The level of research Porter brought to bear in that tale of pursuit and escape, detailing the European refugee crisis from people fleeing the Middle East, is again evident in White Hot Silence.

Again, Porter focuses on the refugee crisis as the centre of the web he spins. Paul Samson is sent on a mission to recover a person of interest, but this time his quarry is well-known to him, and resides in his past.

Greek born aid-worker Anastasia Cristakos is kidnapped by Mafioso while driving to visit a refugee centre, one that houses Senegalese Africans, and others fleeing to Europe; risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Southern Italy.

She manages to call her wealthy husband Denis Hisami in California, the man who has funded the Calabrian refugee centre, before being drugged and locked within a ship traversing the Mediterranean. The kidnapping has nothing to do with her humanitarian work, nor is it a ransom demand against the wealth of her husband, or so she believes. It has much to do with Denis Hisami’s time in Iraqi Kurdistan, and information the Billionaire gained from his past service as an officer with the Peshmerga.

Hisami contacts Paul Samson for help in ex-filtrating his wife Anastasia, because he has a big problem. Denis Hisami has enemies, and finds himself arrested on trumped up terrorism charges. Incarcerated in America, he enlists Samson for help.

With gangsters and their criminal networks, as well as spies and a link to Russia; Samson has to use all his connections and guile to help Hisami. At times the narrative is as complex as the motivations of the people behind Hisami’s business and personal problems, though the biggest one might be a double-edged sword: Hisami’s wife Anastasia Cristakos was Paul Samson’s former lover.

Porter intertwines the macro-scale geo-politics of the world stage, with the triangular relationship between Hisami, Anastasia and Samson, as well as the cabals of gangsters and spies that striate this narrative.

Tense, exciting and well researched, it is little wonder that Henry Porter’s name is ranked with fellow literary espionage writers Robert Littell, Charles Cumming and John le Carre.

Highly recommended, and with its precursor, Firefly in paperback, it’s a back-to-back read.