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Published: 21/01/2021
New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.
Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.
An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.
Publisher: Verve Books
ISBN: 9780857308108
Number of pages: 240
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A ground breaking spy novel... that explores feminist themes intelligently, with style and wit... Who is Vera Kelly? is a wry take on the pomposity, paranoia and machismo of the spy game - Crime Time
Rosalie Knecht paints a tense Buenos Aires vividly, while presenting Vera's origin story in vignettes throughout the novel, from teenage rebellion in Maryland to sexual self-discovery in underground Brooklyn jazz clubs. The end result is a Cold War novel worthy of a spot next to le Carré, Furst, and Ambler on any bookshelf and will have you wondering what's next for Vera Kelly - Javier Ramirez, The Book Table
The personal is most definitely political in Rosalie Knecht's crisp, lively and subversive second novel, Who Is Vera Kelly?... John le Carré and many other writers make hay with the personal repercussions of assuming false identity. Knecht flips the terms artfully, showing us a heroine who discovers her true tough self by going undercover - Jean Zimmerman, NPR, 'Best Books of 2018'
Who Is Vera Kelly? is rich in detail, filled with suspense, and brings to life a young woman who defies the stereotype of the glamorous male hero that has been, more often than not, the public face of fictional espionage since the inception of the genre. It's a joy to lose yourself while discovering Vera - Anmiryam Budner (Main Point Books)
Who Is Vera Kelly? is as sexy as it is brilliant, and as endearing as it is adrenaline-pumping. - Rachel Kaplan (Avid Bookshop)
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“An enthralling, fun read”
I really enjoyed this - I went in with no expectations, and it was very nearly a 5 star read for me. It scratched a very particular itch - when I was going through my Le Carre obsession (did it ever stop?) I searched... More
“Vera Kelly is worth meeting in this enjoyable novel”
This is an enjoyable, well-written novel about Vera Kelly, a surveillance operative in Argentina in 1966. Told with a timeline in the present and one starting around a decade earlier and closing the gap between then... More
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