Who Is Vera Kelly?: 1 (A Vera Kelly Story) - Softcover

Sardonic, intelligent, and thrillingly original, Rosalie Knecht has not only revitalized the female spy novel with her feisty, indeterminable heroine, she's also joyfully queered it. I loved this book and I loved Vera. Read this book right now!"--Courtney Maum, author of I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE WITHOUT YOU

A tangled, atmospheric story that gradually builds suspense to a satisfyingly surprising denouement.--Booklist

A buzzing, smoky, gin-soaked charmer.--Library Journal, Hot Picks

The character readers have been waiting for. A riveting, satisfying novel.--Kirkus Reviews

One thing Vera Kelly is not is a standard-issue spy. . . . Knecht has written a hybrid novel that is both literary in its attention to character and language, and a thriller where Vera's status as a spy makes her a hunted woman who will have to find a way to survive. This intelligent novel about the quest for secret intelligence is a real treat.--Signature Reads

When we first meet Vera Kelly, she's a troubled 1950s teenager who's overdosed on Equanil. Next she's in explosive 1960s Buenos Aires after being recruited by the CIA ("I could be charming if I wanted to. There were basic tricks"). . . . All the edgy fun of classic noir but in an original voice that's fresh, brisk, and snappy. Hugely buzzing.--Library Journal, Most Anticipated Books of Spring/Summer

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

Gripping, subtle, 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.--The New York Times Book Review

There's political intrigue, spycraft, solid location work, and all the things you would want from espionage fiction, but there's also something strange and subversive going on in this story. Knecht has a livewire intellect and I hope she sticks with spy fiction of some kind of another, because this is just the kind of jolt the genre (my beloved genre) needs now and again.--CrimeReads

When it comes to women spies, the question is no longer, 'Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?' It is, 'Who is Vera Kelly?'--Refinery29

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 the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.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.