A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin.
But can Langley trust the Russian at its centre?
CIA operatives Sia and Max enter Russia to recruit Vladimir Putin’s moneyman. Sia works for a London firm that conceals the wealth of the super-rich. Max’s family business in Mexico – a CIA front since the 1960s – is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple, and their targets are Vadim, Putin’s private banker, and his wife Anna, who is both a banker and an intelligence officer herself…
My thoughts: I’ve been getting into spy novels recently (Mick Herron’s books started it) and I have been fascinated by Russia since I studied it and went there (almost twenty years ago, I can’t imagine what it’s like now) during my A Levels, so this was perfect.
Written by a former CIA operative, so I imagine he knows his stuff, this is a clever, twisting plot, full of unreliable figures, dodgy dealings and double agents.
Lawyer Sia works for a somewhat suspect firm in London, laundering suspect money into off shore accounts and shell corporations for wealthy clients – including Russia. She’s also a CIA operative, keeping them informed of her firm’s clients. Now she’s being asked to go into the field to bring a potentially useful Russian woman over to the CIA.
She’s partnered up with Mexican horse breeder, and legacy CIA asset, Max, as the target’s obnoxious banker husband is apparently into horses. Anna, who is working for the Russian intelligence agency, but comes from a formerly influential family, and has married into another. She’s deeply unhappy, and Sia sees an opening.
Sia and Max’s boss, Artemis, is pretty unscrupulous and determined to get an asset, like Anna, close to the heart of things, even if her father’s influence has waned. She tells them to do whatever they need to, she has in the past.
I was utterly hooked from the off, when Artemis wakes up naked and without much memory of the night before and then beats up the man who tries to blackmail her. Who is this woman? Then she puts this risky op together with two people who aren’t exactly trained for it, madness. And so, so good.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 