Three Envelopes

Starred review from February 13, 2017
Hezroni’s superior thriller debut will send chills up the spines of even jaded genre fans. Blowback from a complex Israeli intelligence operation plotted by an entity known simply as the Organization has murderous consequences a decade later. Extracts from the notebook of the man who was recruited by the Organization and known as agent 10483 reveal him to have been a paranoid child, who routinely measured the level of liquids in his family’s refrigerator to make sure that no poison was added to them while he was asleep. This notebook implicates 10483’s former superiors in a mass murder in Canada in 2006; in 2016, one of them, Avner Moyal, receives the notebook from a law firm that held it for 10 years. As Moyal works his way through 10483’s recollections, he learns the truth about the agent’s activities. Meanwhile, the reader learns that someone currently poses a threat to the Organization’s leaders. Hezroni maintains a high level of suspense as he expertly toggles between past and present en route to the heart-stopping conclusion.