It’s 1989. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact still exist. Mikhail Gorbachev has instituted Glasnost, but the communists are still in charge, attempting to control everything within Russia.
“Red Lily: A Delightful Cold War Spy Mystery with a Parisian Flair” by Janice Graham is a charming satire of spy novels, set in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Carl Box is a paint and varnish consultant for Disney’s Epcot Center. His hobby is memorizing color hex codes, the six-digit hexadecimal number defining a color.
Others think it dull, but color hex codes have fascinated him since childhood. He grew up in a conservative Republican family in California. He’s alone, divorced, and an only child whose parents are dead.
Box’s only companion is his two-legged dog, Billy. Billy lost his hind legs to an alligator at Disney World. Carl rescued Billy, brought him to a veterinarian for treatment, and took him in, fixing a trolley to allow Billy mobility without hind legs.
Carl leads a dull, lonely life. What’s more, he is content with his boring life. He is well-off financially and embraces predictability.
But then he learns that his Aunt Lily has died in Paris and named Carl her heir. He inherits her property, which Carl assumes is a small apartment. He is also sent a round-trip, first-class ticket to Paris on Air France with paid hotel accommodations so he can close out the estate.
He has never met Aunt Lily. She was the family scandal, never mentioned by his parents. He has a vague impression that she lived an impoverished life.
Aunt Lily
Carl has a week’s vacation and no plans but is still reluctant to go. What would he do with Billy? His intern, Mimi, a student from France, convinces him to go. She assures Carl that he can take Billy with him; the French are accommodating to small dogs. Reluctantly, Carl sets off.
Suddenly his staid life enters the fast lane. His aunt is still alive. She faked her death because someone tried to kill her. She doesn’t think that the KGB—the Russian secret police and intelligence agency—ordered the attack, although the agency could have done it. It doesn’t fit the KGB pattern, and Aunt Lily thinks that she’s too unimportant.
Aunt Lily runs a samizdat (Soviet dissident) press. She publishes both Russian and English translations of clandestine writings smuggled out of the Soviet Union. English-language translations are sold in the West; Russian works are smuggled into Russia.
Recently, she made a big score. She arranged to receive a smuggled copy of the entire KGB archives.
The information will be invaluable to Western intelligence services. Lily plans to trade it to either MI6 or the CIA. What she wants in exchange is for them to smuggle a Russian dissident out of Russia. He has just been released from prison. Lily fears that if he doesn’t leave Russia, he will end up back in prison for speaking out against the Soviet government.
Cold War Comedy
Carl finds himself roped into Aunt Lily’s Cold War caper. Accompanied by Billy, he finds himself dodging secret agents, arranging dead drops, sending coded messages, and playing the spy. He is in the middle of a John Le Carré or Graham Greene plot, but one that could have been staged by the Marx Brothers. The Russian émigré community that Aunt Lily works with is a collection of eccentrics, oddballs, and misfits. To his surprise, Carl discovers that he fits in with them.
The effort is complicated by the Paris police. They suspect that Carl had something to do with his aunt’s death. She was a wealthy woman. As heir, Carl is the obvious beneficiary. Carl knows that she is still alive, but he can’t tell the police because she needs to stay “dead” until the transfer is complete.
Along the way, Carl uncovers long-buried family secrets. These secrets involve his aunt, his parents, and even himself. They go back decades, to the 1950s, and they span the globe from Moscow to Orange County, California. Even the dissident that Lily wants out of Russia is tied in. He was her long-ago lover in Paris and Moscow.
Carl also discovers unexpected depths of heroism within himself; he realizes for the first time that he is competent in a crisis. He acquires a taste for adventure. He learns to embrace change and the challenge of meeting and overcoming the unexpected.
The book captures the mood of 1989 perfectly. Ronald Reagan has just stepped off the stage. California is still a conservative state. The Soviet Union is dying, but no one yet realizes it. The Cold War is entering its end stage.
MI6, the CIA, and the KGB are still playing the great espionage game that started after World War II ended. The Berlin Wall would fall that November, an event unimaginable before it happened. Graham evokes the spirit of those times in this book.
Warm and witty, “Red Lily” mixes suspense with farce in a fast-paced adventure with numerous unexpected turns. It’s as much a story about family as a story about spies. “Red Lily” is a charming, light-hearted thriller, one that appeals on many levels.
“Red Lily: A Delightful Cold War Spy Mystery with a Parisian Flair“
By Janice Graham
Vendome Books: May 26, 2025
Hardcover, 302 pages
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