Clark Davis, author of God's Scrivener: [Jack & Emily] was an absolutely pleasurable reading experience, both in the simple terms of holding interest in setting and characters and in the more associative, intellectual possibilities of what Kiteley has created. My chief enjoyment was simply being in this lovely, almost self-enclosed place, which seemed both very real and sometimes dream-like. I'm particularly drawn to this use of a small, localized landscape to map out a little world that a character then moves around in, to the ostensible purpose of solving a mystery but really just to be an intelligent observer there. It's something like the feeling of a good meal in good company, whatever that momentary sense of comfort and pleasure might suggest. So this is a spy novel—but not exactly. It's an island book that might make you think of other island books and their utopian implications. It might remind you a little bit of one of Maigret's slow walks around a provincial town.
Blake Guffey, in Goodreads: Introducing Brian Kiteley’s first novel, Still Life With Insects, Leah Cohen: “Writing spare requires more courage and craft than writing long.” I don’t know that this is true in all cases, but it captures well the specific talents of Kiteley, the ability to set a scene which is both familiar and ephemeral, characters who breathe with life yet are always slipping through one’s fingers, a story, yes, but not of day or night, things here operate with a twilight sense, a peeping between the layers of self, relationships, scene, geopolitical events: all is fleeting, yes, but it is not hopeless, there is light yet, and there is the attempt (by writer and by our protagonist) to grasp it, or if not to grasp it, at least to consciously revel in it a while longer. What else is a shared meal, good wine, making love, or waves reaching onto the beach? What else is hope? Greene and Highsmith of course spring to mind, but the prose, gentle, direct, honest, is Kiteley’s own, and will delight readers of any type of fiction.
Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie: Brian Kiteley’s signature lyric sensibility and gift for spring-loaded compression combine perfectly with the crisp exigencies of the classic international spy novel in his newest novel. Taut thriller, tough romance and unambiguous love letter to the southern Mediterranean and the country-sized island of Crete, Jack & Emily is a marvelous book, one that evokes Graham Greene and Len Deighton at their best with just enough Harry Mathews in the mix to keep things sprightly.
Clifford Chase, author of Winkie and The Tooth Fairy: Jack & Emily exhilarated me not as a standard spy novel, but in how it subverts the conventions of the spy novel to create a genre all its own—part love story, part examination of U.S. foreign policy prior to 9/11, part meditation on storytelling itself. Maybe “Kiteley” should be CIA lingo for “sly.” Instead of the terse, hardboiled dialogue of action movies, he gives us eloquent exchanges in full, rounded paragraphs. CIA employee Jack is more like a guy you knew in college than, say, Jason Bourne. As for suspense, Kiteley pushes most of the major events off stage, taking us by surprise and forcing us to glean what’s already happened—almost like we’re the true intelligence experts in this thrillingly original novel.
Janet Bland, author of A Fish Full of River: Jack & Emily is a clandestine confession, an illumination of difficult encounters that might become the source of both love and regret. Set in the last days of Reagan’s Cold War, and punctuated with sharp, effective flashbacks to the Allies’ covert activity in Greece during World War II, Brian Kiteley’s story immerses us in the shadow world of Jack, a disillusioned CIA operative, and Emily, who is drifting around the Mediterranean and waiting for something to happen. The setting is lush on the page—the breeze off the water, a glass of the local aperitif, the salty tang of the olives on the tongue. Kalyves, both beautiful and dangerous, sets the stage for a relationship and a story driven by familiar juxtaposition. Light and dark. Good and evil. Jack and Emily find each other in moments of shared sensory perception, just large enough to contain a desire for more than what might be possible. Their connection is immediate—evocative in language, passionate in person, but constrained by both Jack’s work and Emily’s family connection to governmental intrigue. Even more than secrecy, the limitations of knowing rest at the heart of these characters’ hopes and their quiet search for not simply answers but purpose.
Nick Arvin, author of Mad Boy:
Brian Kiteley’s novel, Jack & Emily, is a literary spy novel and love story, set in Greece in the 80’s. It is finely wrought and built with a profound sense of place and silences that speak loudly. You can feel in the book’s pages how Brian spent years evolving its form and phrases.