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The Amateur: A Novel of Revenge |
The hero is a cryptographer with the CIA in America whose girlfriend becomes the victim of a hostage-taking that goes wrong. He decides to take his revenge by hunting out and killing the perpetrators. The publisher's blurb, in my view, is not justified in claiming that the author is in the same class as Le Carré but nevertheless I found this thriller an enjoyable light read and recommend it as such.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 34 April 2006) |
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The Stalin Epigram |
This remarkable novel is built round real people caught up in Stalin's Great Terror. Its central character is the martyred poet Osip Mandelstam and his heroic wife Nadezhda whose great memoir Hope Against Hope defines the period. As does this powerful book encapsulating the triumph of the human spirit over a perverted ideology masquerading as the socialist promised land. I cannot praise it too highly.
(David Graham - bwl 61 Summer 2011) |
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