In his follow-up to his incredible debut, “The Bucharest Dossier,” William Maz takes the reader on an adventure back to Bucharest a few years after the dismantling of the USSR, the fall of communism, and Romania’s Christmas Revolution.
The Cold War Is Over
Cold War spy novels offer a strange sense of nostalgic romanticism. It was an era wherein the lines between the good guys (the West) and bad guys (USSR) never blurred, at least not in fiction. But that era is over at the opening of Maz’s second novel set in 1993, and the romanticism has gone with it.
Maz began his spy series at the tail end of the Cold War (December 1989) and created a bit of tough sledding for himself in the genre of spy novels because the 1990s are somewhat of a dead space for espionage, at least the romantic kind. That dead space, of course, ended when the Global War on Terror erupted in the early 2000s, though the modern era of espionage is far from romantic.
But the book is still based in Eastern Europe, which lends itself to a sense of Cold War nostalgia, even more since only the names (like the Securitate and the KGB) have changed. The criminal underworld and the intelligence agencies also maintain their familiar roles in this spy novel.
Even though it’s fiction, Maz’s novel demonstrates clearly how communism had crumbled into a perverse form of capitalism, resulting in the rise of the oligarchs. From a historical perspective, it is an informative read on how Romania, and many of the former states of the USSR, moved from a communist economy to a capitalist one. As Maz, who was born in Bucharest, makes clear, the losers of each system were typically the same.
Mole Hunt and Personal Journey
The hunt leads Hefflin to encounter a number of interesting individuals, from agents to underworld bosses to arms dealers. While he works to unravel the mystery that has intelligence agencies and a lot of powerful people placing a target on his back, it is the secondary narrative—a familial search—that comes into focus and nearly takes precedence. Maz eventually weaves the two together, specifically at the climax.In the debut novel, Maz used the same plot device: connecting a familial search with a mission. The difference between the two, however, is that the initial work had an elusive and very intriguing love interest. It helped move the story along. In “The Bucharest Legacy,” the plot device struggles to do so.
“The Bucharest Legacy” has an incredibly elaborate plot with a lot of moving parts. There is plenty of action in the novel, and the story starts off with a bang (literally) and a very intriguing scenario. Maz’s overall plot, which begins with a defection, launches the story forward. The author does a nice job of slowly but surely connecting all the dots and tying up all the loose ends.
Though most of the ends are tied up in the action, there are a few left to dialogue. Using dialogue to tie up loose ends is workable, but there is always the risk of making the resolution too simple. Maz does this a couple of times and, indeed, the resolutions do feel too simple. There are also several action sequences that are resolved too easily to feel authentic.
The bar was set high for the sequel of “The Bucharest Dossier,” which was such a fantastic piece of work. “The Bucharest Legacy: The Rise of the Oligarchs” is an enjoyable and easy read with good action sequences. Maz, as he proved in his debut, has a gift for detail. But as mentioned, some of the resolutions feel too easy, especially for a complex plot. It may have been that the book needed another 50 to 100 pages in order to work out the promised complexity.
