“Nothing is as it appears. Be careful.”

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s THE DARK PATH TO THE RIVER was published in 1987, decades and a world apart from this beguiling espionage thriller that features mature, civilized youth. Miriam West’s daughters --- Jane, Sophie and Elizabeth --- move from D.C. to London in the 1980s when Miriam marries Sir Winston Chatham. Elizabeth (“Lizzy”) was 10 when her ex-CIA agent father, Jesse West (covert operative name: Calvin Wheat), died in a suspicious aircraft crash.

"...a mystery solved by an audacious young lady’s wit and cunning. It has overtones somewhat comparable to a cross-cultural rendition of the Bard’s classic, Romeo and Juliet."

The male characters are portrayed as feckless schlimazels: Lizzy’s stepfather, “Lord” Winston, and his son, Dennis. According to Chatham’s daughter, “Pickles,” Dennis said “he was going to be rich so he could move out of this family of ill-bred women.” Dennis schmoozes Gerald Wagner, alluded to as a former Nazi, who assumes the fictitious title of Doctor. A mouse trying to devour the cat.

As teens, Lizzy’s Lebanese-Palestinian classmate, Adil Hasan, causes an explosion in a London school lab by improperly mixing chemicals. That’s not the only chemical reaction in this tale that could have been written by a contemporary Jane Austen, with a hint of John le Carré espionage seasoning.

Lizzy and Adil are smitten, destined to be a couple, but Adil’s father is extradited from England based on allegations from “Doctor” Wagner regarding weapons trafficking. The plot thickens like winter molasses as readers learn that Adil’s dad had close ties to Jesse West’s covert pseudonym, Calvin Wheat. And the fictitious doctor knows about illicit weapons, his chosen profession.

Adil leaves London to be near his father, who traipses about the Middle East to labyrinthine safe houses. Lizzy’s letters to Adil are returned, and she learns that Chatham has received and hidden some of Adil’s letters, giving Lizzy the impression of lost love. But she prevails, traveling to East Berlin the year the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall collapse, and connects dots leading to her father, Adil’s family, Wagner and Chatham: “Past and present suddenly collided in my head like a migraine.”

Readers initially may consider BURNING DISTANCE to be a weak thriller, but given Lizzy’s teen point of view, the tale flows in that vein: “We were close to being adults, but we didn’t yet have control over our lives.” Instead of being promoted as an espionage thriller, it should be considered a mystery solved by an audacious young lady’s wit and cunning. It has overtones somewhat comparable to a cross-cultural rendition of the Bard’s classic, Romeo and Juliet.