Cover image of "The Fourth Courier," an inventive historic thriller

When the Soviet Union collapsed the day after Christmas in 1991, security officials in the West faced a new nuclear nightmare. Tons of nuclear fuel had accumulated in the country’s far-flung reactors and military bases—and some of that fuel might make its way to terrorists, sold by unscrupulous scientists or military officers. It would have been easy for resourceful smugglers to slip into Poland across the 130-mile eastern border with what is now Belarus. And that’s the premise of Timothy Jay Smith’s inventive historic thriller, The Fourth Courier.

Four murdered Russian couriers, and one is radioactive

FBI Special Agent Jay Porter is in Warsaw at the request of the new Solidarity government. He is assisting the Bureau of Organized Crime of the national police in an investigation that may point to nuclear smuggling. Three Russian couriers had turned up dead in Warsaw in successive weeks—and an autopsy of the third body revealed traces of radiation on the victim’s hands. Now, police have discovered a fourth courier. And all four are linked by identical knife wounds on their cheeks, clearly the killer’s signature.

Jay and two of the Bureau’s senior officers, Director Basia Husarska and Detective Leszek Kulski, scramble for clues. Then the timeline shifts five days in the past as Jay arrives in Warsaw. Eventually, we will learn who those couriers really were, how they got to Poland, and why they came. But there’s a great deal of action before we know the answers to those questions.

The Fourth Courier by Timothy Jay Smith (2019) 322 pages ★★★★☆

Photo of the Russian-Polish border, where a key scene takes place in this inventive historic thriller
Here, on the border between the former Soviet Union and Poland, couriers smuggled nuclear fuel from the Russia into newly liberated territory. Image: Wikipedia

A diverse cast of characters

We soon meet other major players in this unfolding story. It’s a complex and suspenseful tale involving Russians, Americans, and a Serbian as well as Polish police. In addition to Jay Porter, Basia Husarska, and Jeszek Kulski, the principal characters include:

  • Kurt Crawford. a gay Black man who is Acting Regional Security Officer at the Embassy, whom Jay identifies as a CIA officer
  • Lilka, an attractive young Polish woman, who will become Jay’s love interest
  • Lilka’s violent live-in ex-husband, Jacek, whom she can’t evict because of the housing shortage
  • General Dravko Mladic, head of the State Security Service for what remains of Yugoslavia. He dreams of becoming leader of Greater Serbia and believes that acquiring a nuclear weapon will help him achieve it.
  • Dr. Sergej Ustinov, a top nuclear scientist at Kosmonovo, a Russian secret weapons research center. He claims to have invented a suitcase nuclear bomb.

Timothy Jay Smith shows great talent in developing these characters and steadily building suspense. And he writes well. For any fan of espionage or crime fiction, The Fourth Courier is well worth reading.

About the author

Photo of Timothy Jay Smith, author of this inventive historic thriller
Timothy Jay Smith. Image: Leapfrog Press

Timothy Jay Smith is the author of a half-dozen novels as well as a stage-play. His bio (reproduced on Google Books as well as Amazon) refers to his “distinguished career” that appears to have been involved somehow in international relations but is otherwise undefined. He has won several awards for his writing.

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