Family dynamics are also firmly on display in Dan Fesperman’s Safe Houses (Knopf, $26.95, 416 pages), a tale that ably blends issues both big and small. We open in the height of Cold War Berlin with the CIA’s Helen Abell working a mission fraught with risk. Cut to the present where Abell and her husband are both murdered, leaving their daughter Anna Shoat to sort through the morass, both past and present, that involves her estranged brother and family secrets yanked from the shadows. The safe houses of the title become as much metaphor as plot point and wondrously interconnected at that. The result is a bracing and blistering work that rivals the best of Nelson DeMille with a touch of Jeffrey Archer tossed in for good measure. Superbly crafted and written.