Loners and Assassins

Tom Lutz’s new novel ‘Chagos Archipelago’ finds unexpected heart in the adventures of geopolitical operatives and globe-trotting fuckups.

By Jerry StahlFebruary 3, 2026

• Fiction

• Noir

IN 1937, GRAHAM GREENE published a review of a Shirley Temple movie that ended up leading to a libel judgment against him, forcing the esteemed novelist to live in exile from Great Britain. While Tom Lutz may not have been banished by his own country (or KO’d by a kiddie-star libel charge), it would not surprise me if, say, Blackwater—dubbed “Darkwater” in Chagos Archipelago, Lutz’s fantastic new Greene-esque thriller of personal and postcolonial realpolitik in the Indian Ocean—hit back at the author for his clear-eyed invocation of the organization, in all its nefarious, government-sanctioned glory.

The peculiar genius of this novel is how the author walks the line between scathing political screed and deeply felt character study of its four protagonists. If you step onto an elevator with this quartet, as rendered by their creator, there is no guarantee you’ll be stepping off. Which, thriller-wise, is a good thing. First up is Mónica, a Spanish assassin, in the Killing Eve/La Femme Nikita mold—she murdered her abusive stepfather—who has begun to question her choice of profession. Then there’s Alain, a Madagascar-born fuckup who cheats on his wife, impregnates his girlfriend, and joins the French Foreign Legion. As one does. Next up is Skye, a sophisticated middle-aged operative and woman of mystery whose motives, and intentions, we can never quite pin down. Finally, like an old friend, there’s Frank Baltimore, the former house contractor, familiar to Lutz fans from his previous novel, Born Slippy (2020), now sailing the world solo—in a boat named, mysteriously, God Sees—thanks to an ungodly quantity of money, of sketchy origin, bequeathed to him by his former partner (who, spoiler alert, may or may not show up again).

Structurally, each chapter alternates perspective from character to character. If, however, you subscribe to that Henry James chestnut that “landscape is character,” then the most significant, overarching member of the novel’s roster is Chagos itself. The archipelago, for those whose mastery of international geopolitics is as stunted as this reviewer’s, exists as the ultimate example of colonial horror, ecological destruction, and—it goes without saying—vicious and intrusive military intrusion. All of which makes it the perfect setting. We’re talking, after all, about a population—the Chagossian people—exploited and forcefully displaced by global powers (i.e., the United States) that needed to establish, and maintain, Diego Garcia, the famously mysterious and “strategic” military base. Given that our own country was founded on the dynamic of a colonial power moving out Indigenous peoples to put up McDonald’s and dog tracks a couple centuries later, the setup is pretty much on-brand. And not exactly new. What is new is how Lutz renders the dynamic in a way that neatly, and brilliantly, parallels relations among the loners and assassins, lost and alienated souls who populate the book.

Given the ubiquity, say, of a type like Mónica in contempo culture—the sexy and skillful professional killer—Lutz’s specific accomplishment is to render the cliché fresh. Listen to Mónica as she explains, and justifies, her profession in an internal monologue, which, it’s worth noting, stands out as a key ingredient in the novel’s special sauce:

There were two kinds of people, she had decided some time ago. There were those who, when death is looking them in the face, think—what? why me? what did I do to deserve this? She found these people comical. Not a single one of them had any right to ask that question. Leave aside that 60 percent of them cheat on their spouses—and in her subset of vics, more than that—and that 90 percent cheat on their taxes, drive over the legal limit for alcohol and over the speed limit, all of which was less salient than the fact that a hundred percent of her vics, every single one of them, was complicit in gross economic inequities of myriad varieties and complicit in destroying the planet with their climate-devastating consumption. She didn’t kill poor people. [Italics mine.] The dead were all rich, and therefore all guilty. They had no right to ask, why me?

Exactly! Amid the shoot-outs, suspense, nautical adventures, and terrifically pulse-quickening moments served up by the author, what elevates Chagos Archipelago from run-of-the-mill “literary” thriller to enlightened, even soul-deepening text is the essential humanity, the (for lack of a better word) heart, that runs through the work. Nowhere is this clearer than in main character Frank’s elegiac observations about the human race. As Frank watches the crowded scene in one of the countless coastal towns he likes to visit while breaking up his oceanic solitude, the narrator describes his perspective: “This […] was what he found so relaxing about these crowded streets […] the sense that most of us, most of the time, were good, and good to each other.”

It’s a remarkable, and unexpected, sentiment from a man whose firsthand, up close and personal bouts with treachery and violence have nearly left him dead. Frank, I suspect, stands out as a mouthpiece for the author’s own knowing, only slightly gimlet-eyed view of the world. A view, in its jaded optimism, that evokes Jonathan Swift’s celebrated observation (to paraphrase): “I loathe mankind, but love every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

Lutz himself, it’s worth pointing out, has made it his mission to visit as many countries on the planet as will have him. When asked, in a recent interview at the bookstore DIESEL, just how many countries, he replied, not without a certain well-earned pride, that he’d been to 150. And there it is. Some travelers return home with tchotchkes and souvenirs. Some, like Graham Greene, Robert Stone, Joseph Conrad—and Tom Lutz—return with beautiful, politically savvy, and massively entertaining works of art.