BOOK DESCRIPTION
In the thick of the Cold War, a betrayal at the highest level risks the lives of two courageous female spies: MI6’s best Soviet agent and the CIA’s newest Moscow recruit.
Vienna, 1954
After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Inspired by her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth. She begins passing intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.
Moscow, 1980
A student in the Foreign Studies Initiative, Anya Kadinova finishes her degree at Georgetown University and boards a flight home to Moscow, leaving behind the man she loves and a country she’s grown to respect. Though raised by dedicated and loyal Soviet parents, Anya soon questions an increasingly oppressive and paranoid regime at the height of the Cold War. Then the KGB murders her best friend and Anya chooses her side. Working in a military research lab, she relays Soviet plans and schematics to the CIA in an effort to end the 1980s arms race.
The past catches up to the present when an unprecedented act of treachery threatens all agents operating within Eastern Europe, and both Ingrid and Anya find themselves in a race for their lives against time and the KGB.
PRAISE FOR A SHADOW IN MOSCOW
- “In her nail-biting latest . . . Reay builds an immersive world behind the Iron Curtain, full of competing loyalties and a constant, chilling sense of paranoia. Readers will be enthralled.”— Publishers Weekly
- ”Rich with fascinating historical detail and unforgettable characters!”— Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times Bestselling author of The Wedding Veil
- “…intrigue, twists and turns, acts of bravery and sacrificial love, and an unforgettable cold war setting with clever daring women at the helm.”— Susan Meissner, USA Today Bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author who has enjoyed a lifelong affair with books. She publishes both fiction and nonfiction, holds a BA and MS from Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and three children.
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BOOK REVIEW
In this dual-timeline thriller, the stories of Ingrid and Anya are told. In 1954, Ingrid Bauer finds herself married to a Russian man and living in Moscow. She is told to keep her British mother a secret and begins to suspect that her husband is working for the KGB.
In 1982, Anya has graduated from Georgetown and is immediately forced to return to her home in Soviet Russia, where she is expected to be a loyal comrade in the arms race against the United States. Then her best friend is killed, and it may have been by her own government.
The first twenty percent or so of this intriguing spy thriller is a bit of a slow burn, but as suspense builds it becomes more and more captivating. In both timelines, the innermost thoughts of both women indicate love, loss, and the decision to make tough choices. The difficult, dangerous, harrowing life of a spy is well described, and the reader learns what it might have been like to live behind the Iron Curtain.
The ability of the author to delve deep into the innermost thoughts of her characters is admirable.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in U.S. and Russian History, and fiction about the Cold War.
My rating is 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 on sites with no partial star option. I received a free copy of this book via Austenprose Book Tours. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.
PURCHASE LINKS
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