Cover Story
Colin Burke, Moscow correspondent for an American magazine, finds himself caught up in the total disarray and corruption lying at the heart of the crumbling Soviet Union
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In 1990 Robert Cullen published, to widespread and enthusiastic praise, his first novel, Soviet Sources, a masterful and prophetic thriller about an American journalist in Moscow who uncovered a world-threatening KGB coup against the embattled reformist Soviet government. The New York Times (which picked the book as one of its Notable Books of the Year) hailed it as "first-rate"; Time said that it "jolts the genre into new life"; and the Los Angeles Times called it "unique." Now, with Cover Story, Cullen has surpassed the high standards of that earlier book and should be greeted even more warmly by readers and critics alike.His hero from Soviet Sources, Colin Burke, is back again, this time as a correspondent for a newsmagazine called America Weekly. While covering Middle East peace talks in Moscow, Burke is given a tip on a different, more dangerous story involving the Syrians and Russian nuclear scientists. "I'm insensitive," he says early on. "It has its advantages." Burke is not, of course, and soon he is besieged by foreign agents of all stripes, finds himself the target of office intrigue in both Moscow and back in New York, is forced to rely on the black market and its denizens for assistance, and is having increasing trouble with the bottle...A thoroughly convincing and gripping portrait of present-day Russia, a crumbling society in almost total disarray, with opportunities for corruption, double-dealing, and betrayal everywhere, Cover Story is a brilliantly sustained novel of suspense.
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