Who Is Vera Kelly

(Paperback)

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An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who is Vera Kelly introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.

Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.

'Who Is Vera Kelly is the twisty, literary, woman-driven spy novel you've always wanted to read' Amy Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Waits with Gun

'Forget about 007. This heroine has her own brand of spycraft...'Washington Post

'Gripping, magnificently written...This is a cool, strolling boulevardier of a book, worldly, wry, unrushed but never slow, which casts its gaze upon the middle of the last century and forces us to consider how it might be failing us still' New York Times Book Review

'The personal is most definitely political in Rosalie Knecht's crisp, lively and subversive second novel, Who Is Vera Kelly...John le Carr and many other writers make hay with the personal repercussions of assuming false identity. Knecht flips the terms artfully, showing us a heroine who discovers her true tough self by going undercover' NPR

'Thanks to Rosalie Knecht's clever, hilarious writing, you'll find yourself wanting everyone you know to read it so that you can discuss together the wholly original, brilliantly subversive character that is Vera Kelly.'NYLON

Reviews

A ground breaking spy novel... that explores feminist themes intelligently, with style and wit... Who is Vera Kelly is a wry take on the pomposity, paranoia and machismo of the spy game * Crime Time *
Rosalie Knecht paints a tense Buenos Aires vividly, while presenting Vera's origin story in vignettes throughout the novel, from teenage rebellion in Maryland to sexual self-discovery in underground Brooklyn jazz clubs. The end result is a Cold War novel worthy of a spot next to le Carr, Furst, and Ambler on any bookshelf and will have you wondering what's next for Vera Kelly -- Javier Ramirez * The Book Table *
The personal is most definitely political in Rosalie Knecht's crisp, lively and subversive second novel, Who Is Vera Kelly... John le Carr and many other writers make hay with the personal repercussions of assuming false identity. Knecht flips the terms artfully, showing us a heroine who discovers her true tough self by going undercover -- Jean Zimmerman * NPR, 'Best Books of 2018' *
Who Is Vera Kelly is rich in detail, filled with suspense, and brings to life a young woman who defies the stereotype of the glamorous male hero that has been, more often than not, the public face of fictional espionage since the inception of the genre. It's a joy to lose yourself while discovering Vera -- Anmiryam Budner (Main Point Books)
Who Is Vera Kelly is as sexy as it is brilliant, and as endearing as it is adrenaline-pumping. -- Rachel Kaplan (Avid Bookshop)

Author Bio

Rosalie Knecht is the author of Who Is Vera Kelly, Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery and Relief Map. She is also the translator of Csar Aira's The Seamstress and the Wind (New Directions). She lives in New Jersey.