The desperate group of four men pried loose the tracks, flagged down the train, held the engineer and passengers at gunpoint and blew the mail car to smithereens to crack the safe and make off with the payroll for the troops in town. Not Butch and Sundance, but a raid by an action cell of the Haganah, the Israeli underground resistance operating against British Mandate forces in post-World War II Jerusalem.

To Stewart O’Nan’s 15 previous, omniform novels we can now add the excellent “City of Secrets,” a little jewel, ­wonderfully sparse, moody and uneasy, reminiscent of the delicious, frayed-­collar noir of le Carré’s “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.”

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