The Silent Sisters - Robert Dugoni

The Silent Sisters (2022) marks the completion of Robert Dugoni’s Charles Jenkins trilogy, following The Eighth Sister (2019) and The Last Agent (2020). For the uninitiated, Charles Jenkins is a six foot, five inch black man who in his sixties has been called back into CIA service so that he can extract several women who were trained to spy for the US since birth. You read that right: a huge, black American spy is expected to go undetected inside Russia long enough to help US spies escape the only country they have known their entire lives. Rather surprisingly, Dugoni makes it all seem very possible…if not likely…to work.

Originally, there were seven women working in critical Russian positions who were providing key intelligence information to American counterintelligence officers. Each of the women had been groomed and trained by their Russian parents from birth to believe in what they were doing, and to do it well. But now, things are starting to fall apart, and time is running out on the Seven Sisters because an American traitor has revealed their existence to the Russians. Russian intelligence officers do not know their names, but do know that seven women were planted —  and that some of them are still on the job. Now, the Russians are ruthlessly looking at all women in their early sixties who are working in jobs that would allow them to pass critical intelligence to the US. In biblical fashion, all of these women are going to be eliminated in order to make sure that no spies survive the purge; they will be tortured and killed, one-by-one, until that possibility is eliminated.

The CIA knows that two of the women are still active, but each has gone silent in recent weeks, meaning that the women realize the end is near for them. They need to get out of Russia, and if they are to survive, they need to do it now. Charles Jenkins, who has already gotten one of the seven women out, is going back again to rescue the surviving pair before they meet the fate of those who have already been arrested, tortured, and killed. That the odds are stacked against Jenkins is an understatement. Before this one is over, Jenkins and the women will simultaneously be chased by Russian intelligence agencies, the Russian police, and the Russian mafia, all of whom want to capture Jenkins for reasons of their own. But is being chased by three such powerful groups at the same time necessarily a bad thing?

Bottom Line: Robert Dugoni writes a heck of a thriller, the kind of story involving long, potentially deadly chases where the hero must run for his life even though survival seems a long shot at best. But what Dugoni does better than most thriller writers, is create characters that the reader truly cares about because they become so easy to identify with. We learn about their spouses and children, their hopes and their fears…what makes them tick. And Dugoni does it for both the good guys and the bad guys. The world is not as black or white as we used to believe it was; it’s a hundred shades of grey, instead. There are good guys, and there are bad guys, on both sides. The beauty of The Silent Sisters is watching the good guys find,  recognize, and help each other. 

I recommend the Charles Jenkins trilogy to spy novel fans, and personally I’m happy to see that Dugoni has at least left the door cracked open enough to allow for the possibility of a fourth Jenkins book. So here’s hoping this is not the last time I’ll be reading about the man.

Robert Dugoni

Review Copy provided by Thomas & Mercer

The Silent Sisters to be published on February 22, 2022