38 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of an expatriate leader, the machinations of the U.S. president, and Morovia’s history of intertribal conflict. Rex also must decide whether the beautiful young Moravian queen is friend, foe, or something altogether different. Like Clements’ first novel, Darwin Speaks! (2024), October Surprise uses satire to explore some of our weightiest contemporary challenges. Gary Clements is a retired economic officer who served tours in London, Quito, Santo Domingo, Rennes, and Managua. He currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he writes novels in between rounds of golf. What We Were Making Peter Cloutier, Mindstir Media, 2023, $15.95/paperback, e-book available, 334 pages. What We Were Making follows Jane, a British diplomat assigned to Jakarta to work on an intertwined computing and conservation endeavor in the region’s outer islands. She meets Bill, an American expat teacher on one of the grant-recipient islands, and the two bond over the course of her visits as she is exposed to the island life he has come to understand. But when a natural disaster exposes a plot to undermine the foreign aid provided, each protagonist faces the prospect that their values, duties, and ethics may have compromised the community they were supposed to support. Every assignment ends. Every visa expires. The show must go on. Peter Cloutier is a retired USAID FSO who spent 21 years in Kabul, Maputo, Luanda, Dili, and Bangkok. The Russian Diplomat’s Wife Kenneth Dekleva, independently published, 2025, $11.99/paperback, e-book available, 290 pages. Vienna, Austria—the city of spies. A deep-cover U.S. intelligence officer code-named Copernicus has a chance encounter with a Russian woman while viewing a Klimt painting in a museum. The encounter—a perfect spy recruitment—leads to mystery, romance, and tragedy. But when Copernicus’ agents begin dying in Western Europe, Russia, and North Korea, his meetings with the Russian woman draw the attention of the CIA and Russia’s GRU. A deepcover Mossad officer offers enticements of his own, leading to a deeply moving denouement. Kenneth Dekleva, a member of the Senior Foreign Service, was a regional medical officer/psychiatrist from 2002 to 2016. He served in Moscow, New Delhi, Mexico City, Vienna, London, and Washington, D.C. He is the founder and CEO of Blackwood Advisory Solutions LLC, a boutique global telepsychiatry and business intelligence consulting firm. closer to home Robert Richard Downes, Longhornbar Books, 2025, $14.95/paperback, e-book available, 220 pages. The sequel to 2024’s and far away of the Man series, closer to home follows a retired intelligence officer who is frequently asked to undertake special projects even though he really just wants to relax at home in New England with his books and his cats. After completing a dangerous assignment in Europe, the Man is recuperating from an injury when he begins to suspect an international crime syndicate is abducting and trafficking young people in Boston. He feels compelled to hunt down that group and end its operations. Robert Richard Downes is a retired Senior Foreign Service officer with 37 years of federal service, the majority with the State Department. He joined the department in 1981 and served in Australia, Germany, Mexico, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Venezuela. He now lives in his native Texas, where he kayaks, writes, and volunteers for local charities and international organizations. He is the author of five books including Hello to a River, a 2024 book on kayaking in Texas. Counter Narrative Gordon K. Duguid, DS Productions, 2025, $17.99/paperback, e-book available, 346 pages. The African island nation of Kitega is descending into chaos, torn apart by ethnic rivalries and escalating violence. Armed militias assassinate high-ranking government officials while insurgents clash with the military in a blood-soaked power struggle.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=