“The real Casablanca is nothing like the movie. But Tangier is. You can get into a lot of trouble very quickly in Tangier.” Like 1940s Casablanca, “Tangier was an easier city to get into than it was to leave.”

Stephen Holgate weaves an exquisite tapestry of wartime espionage, intrigue and mystery in his astounding debut novel. The only things missing are Bogart romancing Bergman, and Dooley Wilson (“Sam”) singing “As Time Goes By.” With a novel-length flashback to 1940s French-occupied Morocco, TANGIER is the real Casablanca.

"TANGIER is one of the most satisfying debut novels I’ve enjoyed in decades."

In a parallel plot in 1995, Christopher Chaffee is forced out of his D.C. bureaucratic position, for padding expense accounts. His France-born mother receives a letter dated 1940 (the year Chris was born) from her son’s father, Rene Laurent, who presumably died in a Vichy prison. Now Chaffee is in Tangier, tracing that letter to its origin. At passport control, Chaffee explains his predicament: “I was born Christopher Laurent. My mother remarried and I took my stepfather’s name. The man I am looking for is my father.”

Ousted from France in 1940, Rene Laurent was “a diplomat without a country.” He boards, along with other exiled Europeans, in the GREAT EXPECTATIONS-like château owned by a femme fatale: “Yet an air of weary elegance clung to the decaying villa.”

Returning to the present (1995), Chaffee meets various characters and “vagaries of fortune.” American piano man and ex-pat Pete Draper drags Chaffee to a gig at La Crepuscule in a neighboring town, where “[a]n ancient woman sat at a table near the end of the bar, absently waving an ebony cigarette holder.” Madame Dubois is the “[l]ast bit of jetsam left from the high tide of French colonialism.” Madame may have heard of someone who knows someone who may have known Rene Laurent.

Picking up pieces of a discarded life, Chaffee constructs a composite of who his father was, told by a masterful author. This arduous search takes Chaffee on an unexpected expedition of self-awareness. Chaffee “had been looking for his father, and only now did he realize he had finally found himself.”

Holgate is a native Oregonian living in Portland and served as a diplomat at the American Embassy in Morocco. He has published several short stories and freelance articles, and produced a single-person play. TANGIER is one of the most satisfying debut novels I’ve enjoyed in decades.