WHAT I'M READING NOW -- APRIL, 2012

What I'm Reading Now -- April 2012

I forget how I got to Alex Dryden's "Red to Black" (Harper 2009) but I downloaded it from Amazon, that squid, and just finished reading it on various electronic devices.

This is what I suppose you'd call a novel of intrigue and it spans about 10 years in the lives of Finn, a British former MI6 spy, and Anna, a colonel in the FSB. The action moves from Moscow to Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France and then on to the shores of the Black Sea in Moldova.

"Follow the Money," the saying goes, and this is Finn's quest, his compulsion. The hidden trillions of oil money, drug money, mount up in secret Swiss accounts, too much money coming in even for them. Putin and the mafia and the oligarchs control it all and what it might ultimately be used for is what this book is about. Who knows if such a gigantic conspiracy is real, but it sounds as if it is. Dryden is a pseudonym for a journalist who watched the Wall come down in 1989 and has, as a blurb says, "charted the false dawn of democracy," in Russia.

Who can believe anything? The characters have plenty of trouble with this and the reader is not exempt. It all sounds so real and so frighteningly unrelentingly cruel. You want it to be made up, but you suspect it is true.

Just so you know, this lead by Joe Nocera appeared in his April 16 NYT Editorial page column:


Who knew that what corrupt Russian officials care about, more than just about anything, is getting their assets — and themselves — out of their own country? They own homes in St. Tropez, fly to Miami for vacation and set up bank accounts in Switzerland. They understand the importance of stashing their money someplace where the rule of law matters, which is most certainly not Russia. Besides, getting out of Russia is one of the pleasures of being a corrupt Russian official. 

Two more novels featuring Anna follow this first, and they are even better because they carry forward the conspiracies of Putin and his circle and their machinations over Ukraine -- "Ukraine is not even a state," (Putin to George Bush, 2008) : "Moscow Sting" (2010), and "The Blind Spy," (2010).


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"An American Spy," by Olen Steinhauer (Macmillan, 2012) unlike Steinhauer's other intrigue novels, is not set in middle Europe or in the Balkans. This one begins in China and I found it less appealing than the previous stories. "Spy" got excellent reviews (NYT) but don't ask me why.

Milo Weaver, a character from two previous novels who reappears here, can't seem to figure out what's going on, either, and ultimately the reader doesn't care. Although the Dryden book is complex, it is never confusing -- unlike this. Sorry, Olen, but I didn't much like your latest.