Who Is Vera Kelly?

Winner of the 2021 Edgar Award – G.P. Putnam's Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award


Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards

An NPR Best Book of the Year


"Gripping, subtle, magnificently written." —The New York Times Book Review


"A delectable page-turner . . . Vera Kelly introduces a fascinating new spy to literature's mystery canon—one we hope sticks around long beyond this snappy, intimate debut." —Entertainment Weekly

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.


Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.


An exhilarating page-turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who Is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry, and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.