This thriller is set in the early 1990s during the demise of the Soviet Union. Three Soviet spies in Washington find themselves adrift once communism ends. Who’s in charge back home? Do the old rules of spycraft apply? Most important, are old friends and colleagues now coming to kill them?
This premise is intriguing, and the novel has shades of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy—a stimulating story despite uneven writing—but on the whole, it’s a little hard to swallow. Soviet spies raised from birth in a mock-up of an American town in Russia? The story’s more-farfetched elements are leaned on a touch too heavily. Reviewed on Dec. 2, 2021