Red to Black

✍ Scribed by Dryden, Alex

• Book ID: 108979298
• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 218 KB
• Series: Anna Resnikov 1
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780061901102

✦ Synopsis

A beautiful and deadly kgb colonel . . . a brilliant and rebellious mi6 operative... a diabolical plot that will change the world order

Finn is a veteran MI6 operative stationed in Moscow. In the guise of an amiable trade secretary, he has penetrated deep into the dangerous labyrinth that is Russia under Vladimir Putin to discover some of its darkest secrets.

The youngest female colonel in the KGB, Anna is the ambitious daughter of one of the former Soviet Union's elite espionage families. Charged with helping to restore Russia to power under Putin, she is ordered to spy on Finn and discover the identity of his mole.

At the dawn of the new millennium, these adversaries find themselves brought together by an unexpected love that becomes the only truth they can trust. When Finn uncovers a shocking and ingenious plan—hatched during the Cold War—to control the European continent, he and Anna are thrust into a deadly plot in which friend and foe wear the same face. With time running out, they will risk everything—career, reputation, and even their own lives—to expose the truth.

From Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Dryden, a British journalist, eschews both technological marvels and implausible action scenes in his absorbing debut, a spy thriller that exposes the links between the old Russia of the Cold War and the new Russia of Vladimir Putin. In 1999, Anna, a colonel in the Russian foreign intelligence service, becomes romantically involved with Finn, an MI6 agent stationed in Moscow whom she deliberately targets for seduction. Meanwhile, Finn has learned of the Plan, a long-nurtured and fiercely guarded scheme to undermine the West. Finn and Anna each play a decade-long and dangerous double game as they seek to uncover incontrovertible proof that will thwart the Plan and allow them to leave intelligence work together without fear of reprisals. The detailed accounts of the financial maneuverings of the KGB and its successor, the FSB, are mind-boggling. Despite lackluster prose, Dryden's fact-based scenario provides worrisome food for thought.(Sept.)
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Review

“An exceptional novel by any standard; readers who enjoy a love story mixed with their espionage (à la le Carré‘s The Little Drummer Girl) will appreciate.” (Library Journal (starred review) )

“Terrifying, quite frankly . . . chillingly unputdownable—everything you didn’t want to know about Putin but were afraid to ask.” (Emma Thompson )

“Prescient . . . [Red to Black] depicts a frightening and ruthless Russia, which answers to nobody.” (The Economist )

“Dryden has written a superb spy novel....the warning bell that “Red to Black” sounds against Putin’s Russia has a powerful ring, especially when it turns to the KGB.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch )

“Alex Dryden’s brilliant and unforgettable novel has told me more about the making of modern Russia than I could learn from all books of journalism and contemporary history combined...nothing short of miraculous.” Stephen Fry