The Good Man by Gabriel Valjan

Gabriel Valjan’s The Good Man is the first in the series The Company Files. I admit, I’ve had a diet of primarily light reading for the last few years. Lots of romances, humorous space opera, and fantasy that I know well enough that I don’t have to think about it. Sure, I’ve read an average of 30 non-fiction books each year, but most of those that required lots of thought were consumed slowly, like a chapter at a time. So I haven’t really practiced the discipline of sitting down and reading a book that required heavy thought in some time. Maybe it’s because the book was set in Vienna and had lots of German names. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read a political thriller or any murder mystery that wasn’t cozy in a while. Maybe it’s because I was primarily reading late at night and was already tired. But this book felt very heavy to me. It required a lot of thought processes. And yet, it was very, very good. I enjoyed every moment of it. I was constantly thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it. I didn’t read it in a day like so many books lately, but I did chew on it slowly for a week. Set in post-WWII Vienna, The Company is the American counter-intelligence that’s finding its way in a new world of intrigue, so different from the spies who worked for America in WWI. And in Vienna, it’s an office full of young men who fought their way through Europe less than a decade before. They’re looking for Nazis that can be turned to use for American science, but someone is executing the Nazis before they can turn them. I thoroughly enjoyed the intrigue and the double (sometimes triple) crossing. I enjoyed getting to learn a bit about how all the various cultures rubbed up against each other after the war. The descriptions were vivid while not falling over the line into lurid. The characters were fleshed out and intriguing. And the plot was twisty and totally logical and just what I would want from a good mystery. I will most likely read the rest of The Company Files, though I might take my time with the next one. 5/5 stars for The Good Man.