Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

Mr. Gobscheit: It's All Gobscheit by Avery Mann follows Mark Jamison, who expects his retirement in Angel Landing to be permanent until an urgent request sends him to Dublin on a covert naval assignment. He is placed inside the Irish Defense Ministry to observe suspected threats to transatlantic communication cables that pass near Ireland. When a Russian trawler seeks shelter near a critical landing point during a severe Atlantic storm, Mark is ordered to document its presence. That decision pulls him into an international confrontation that expands from a remote harbor to the closed rooms of diplomatic authority. Public statements soon reshape the meaning of events as political ambition enters the picture. Mark continues his assignment under mounting pressure, while control of the seabed beneath the Atlantic becomes the arena where national policy is quietly redirected.

Avery Mann’s Mr. Gobscheit is a contemporary geopolitical thriller that is incredibly relevant in a real-world moment where NATO is at its most fragile. Mann is excellent with driving suspense, and we see Jamison on a risky photography mission near a cable route, and confined aboard a trawler as governments negotiate around him. Jamison is the guy you want to root for, and he refuses to mold his behavior for appearances and stays the course even when he knows the public version of events is a lie. Jack Gobscheit is a formidable antagonist and equally fleshed out, sacrificing others and putting infrastructure at risk. This is a baddie willing to trade national policy for his own advantage. The settings and landscapes are cinematic, with Mann waltzing us through Dublin ministry offices defined by silence and misdirection, and western Irish coastal towns where ordinary routines exist beside strategic assets. This book will delight readers who love espionage fiction, NATO politicking, and intelligent stories rooted in real-world systems.