William Dresden has retreated to his family's villa in the South of France to lick his wounds, following the loss of his grant money and the accompanying mockery amongst his colleagues. He just wants to forget it all happened, but he receives an odd phone call from Adeline Parker, an MI6 agent who wants to meet with him to discuss his research. Dresden is suspicious to say the least, but when Adeline mentions that his father's car accident some 20 years ago wasn't an accident, he decides he needs to see her.
Adeline says that his research and work has come dangerously close to connecting the dots regarding a secret organization, called the Executive, comprised of a group of Eurocentric and nationalist-focused powerful people who have been pulling the strings behind the scenes in European history for over 100 years and include names such as Himmler, Gibbons and Waters. They created the Strasbourg Covenants dedicated to national strength and preserving pure European ethnic groups. Third Reich much? Oh, and his father was a part of this group and he was murdered.
As she is blowing his mind with this info, a bomb goes off at the cafe where they are meeting, and while it was meant for them and they were able to escape injury, Dresden soon finds himself painted as the one responsible for the bombing on the news. He has no choice but to follow Adeline and hope to make it out of this alive and ideally, not rotting in a French prison.
What follows is a grand chase across Europe as Adeline uses her spy skills to evade those who have betrayed her, since she recognized the bomber as another British operative. William is basically along for the ride, but he can hold his own for the most part. He doesn't trust Adeline, but at this point, he doesn't have many options.
As Adeline and William get assistance from both her mentor and his, as well as an old friend in France, they uncover more layers of the Executive and poor William just keeps learning more about his family that he wishes wasn't true.
Meanwhile, the current leader of the Executive, known as The Kanzler, is mentoring a young woman named Sofia Koenig, whose ideas and methods don't really play well with the way "it's always been done." She'd rather see violence, chaos and death (like the bombing in Nice), to get things moving more quickly and is tired of the old ways of the Executive. Perhaps a coup is in order?
Poor William's life is burning down all around him, but his knowledge of the Executive has marked him for death. Can he and Adeline bring down this evil consortium before more innocent lives are lost? They'll have to play dirty if they even have a hope of staying alive, much less taking Sofia and the Executive down.
The Underhanded is an exciting thrill ride as Adeline and William are being chased across Europe. Personally, I found the storyline with Sofia Koenig to be a bit more boring, but I was entertained as long as the story focused on William and Adeline and their antics. There were quite a few shocking reveals about characters in the book and a decent amount of action in this espionage thriller. If you are looking for a spy novel that takes place in modern times, but has callbacks to WWII and before, you might like The Underhanded.
