Today I am taking part in the blog tour for “The Fourth Courier” by Timothy Jay Smith, organised by Love Book Group.

For International Espionage Fans of Alan Furst and Daniel Silva, a new thriller set in post-Soviet era Poland.

It is 1992 in Warsaw, Poland, and the communist era has just ended. A series of grisly murders suddenly becomes an international case when it’s feared that the victims may have been couriers smuggling nuclear material out of the defunct Soviet Union. The FBI sends an agent to help with the investigation. When he learns that a Russian physicist who designed a portable atomic bomb has disappeared, the race is on to find him—and the bomb—before it ends up in the wrong hands.

Smith’s depiction of post-cold war Poland is gloomily atmospheric and murky in a world where nothing is quite as it seems. Suspenseful, thrilling, and smart, The Fourth Courier brings together a straight white FBI agent and gay black CIA officer as they team up to uncover a gruesome plot involving murder, radioactive contraband, narcissistic government leaders, and unconscionable greed.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” the Ambassador said.

A tall black man entered. He had crew cut hair, and his face was peppered with shiny scars. His snug shirt revealed his muscular build. A tiny ruby pierced his ear.

“Good, you’re here. Introduce yourselves.”

“James Porter. FBI.”

“Kurt Crawford. Acting Regional Security Officer.”

They shook hands.

“Please sit.” The Ambassador waved them into leather seats that exhaled under their weight. “How much of a briefing did they give you in DC?” he asked Jay.

“I read the cable traffic, which was short on detail. Clearly, Eastern Europe is a whole new game. I have a lot of questions.”

“Do you want to start with your questions, or shall I have Kurt give you some background?”

Jay answered by asking Kurt, “What’s your involvement in the case? I thought RSOs usually handled kidnappings and evacuations.”

“Kurt works on jobs that don’t fit into anyone else’s job description,” the Ambassador said.

“That’s clear,” Jay said, instantly concluding that Kurt worked for the CIA. Wary of having his case hijacked, he added, “I didn’t know Langley investigated murder cases.”

“Ah, hell!” growled the Ambassador. “Is there nothing confidential any more? You might as well go ahead, Kurt, and get into it.”

“The murders are all yours,” he told Jay. “We’re just glad for the extra eyes and ears. In case you’ve missed it, there’s a war in the former Yugoslavia that’s spreading. The Serbs are making expansionist moves, not to mention setting up concentration camps for Muslims. Last year the UN slapped an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, but that hasn’t stopped the Serbs from acquiring weapons, and Made in Poland is stamped on most of them.”

Jay asked, “What does this have to do with my case?”

“Right now, we don’t know who the bad guys are. Who’s buying, who’s selling, and how the weapons are moving south. We’re hoping you’ll learn something useful from where you’ve landed in their system.”

“I’ve landed in Organized Crime, not border patrol.”

“Mafias control almost all the trucking in the country. We suspect that’s how the weapons are being delivered. They’re easy to conceal inside trucks, and it’s a big enough operation that someone inside Husarska’s unit has to know who is moving what to where.”

Raised crisscrossing America pulling a small green trailer behind the family car, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he hung with them all in an unparalleled an international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, manoeuvre through Occupied Territories, represent the U.S. at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stowaway aboard a “devil’s barge” for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail. These experiences explain the unique breadth and sensibility of Tim’s work, for which he’s won top honours. Fire on the Island won the Gold Medal in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel. He won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the Paris Literary Prize) for his novel, A Vision of Angels. Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012. Tim was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. His screenplays have won numerous competitions. His first stage play, How High the Moon, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award. He is the founder of the Smith Prize for Political Theater.