Susan G. reviewed on + 24 more book reviews
The game of espionage is played in a wilderness of mirrors and the game's savagery has never been clearer than in Tim Sebastian's remarkable thriller, The Spy in Question.
No one is deeper in this wilderness, more lost in the maze than a mole. Twenty years ago, British intelligence turned Dmitry Kalyagin into one of these men who spend their days in shadow. Since then Kalyagin has led two very different lives: in one he's an ambitious and successful Party politician, in the other a spy. Now, though. he has ascended to the highest level of the Politburo and his secrets are in danger.
Kalyagin has been one of the Party's rising young stars, part of the winds of change blowing through the Kremlin. But young stars sometimes burn out and the new Russia is no more merciful and no less ruthless than the old. As Kalyagin's cover unravels he finds himself on the streets of Moscow, lost.
There are two men trying to find him--the KGB man whose career and survival depend on capturing Kalyagin, and the British intelligence chief whose honor demands that he bring this man home safely. A final, shocking act of betrayal turns the game deadly and the Moscow night into a nightmare for all three.
Never before has a writer captured the gritty day-to-day reality of life in the Soviet Union as well as the terrifying unreality of the business of espionage.
No one is deeper in this wilderness, more lost in the maze than a mole. Twenty years ago, British intelligence turned Dmitry Kalyagin into one of these men who spend their days in shadow. Since then Kalyagin has led two very different lives: in one he's an ambitious and successful Party politician, in the other a spy. Now, though. he has ascended to the highest level of the Politburo and his secrets are in danger.
Kalyagin has been one of the Party's rising young stars, part of the winds of change blowing through the Kremlin. But young stars sometimes burn out and the new Russia is no more merciful and no less ruthless than the old. As Kalyagin's cover unravels he finds himself on the streets of Moscow, lost.
There are two men trying to find him--the KGB man whose career and survival depend on capturing Kalyagin, and the British intelligence chief whose honor demands that he bring this man home safely. A final, shocking act of betrayal turns the game deadly and the Moscow night into a nightmare for all three.
Never before has a writer captured the gritty day-to-day reality of life in the Soviet Union as well as the terrifying unreality of the business of espionage.
