The Berlin Exchange
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
'A modern master at work’ THE TIMES
‘Heart-poundingly suspenseful’ WASHINGTON POST
‘Joseph Kanon owns this corner of the literary landscape’ LEE CHILD
Berlin, 1963. The height of the Cold War and an early morning spy swap. On one side of the trade: Martin Keller, an American physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. Keller's most critical possession: his American passport. His most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son.
But Martin has questions: who asked for him? Who negotiated the deal? Just the KGB bringing home one of its agents? Or, as he hopes, a more personal intervention? He has worked for the service long enough to know that nothing happens by chance. They want him for something. Not physics – his expertise is years out of date. Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot.
From the master of suspense, this is an exhilarating return to Joseph Kanon’s heartland, the perilous backdrop of Berlin, now at the height of the Cold War.
PRAISE FOR JOSEPH KANON:
'An enjoyable blend of atmospherics, doomed love story and Cold War derring-do' Sunday Times
'Thoroughly absorbing, a thoughtful and subtle evocation of a place and era' Sunday Telegraph
'Kanon is fast approaching the complexity and relevance not just of le Carré and Greene but even of Orwell' New York Times
'Joseph Kanon continues to demonstrate that he is up there with the very best . . . of spy thriller writers . . . Kanon writes beautifully, superbly' The Times
'The critical stock of Joseph Kanon is high' Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American physicist Martin Keller, the protagonist of this tense spy thriller from Kanon (The Accomplice), was one of the scientists entrusted with the secrets of the Manhattan Project, but he later betrayed that trust by sharing top-secret plans and drawings he memorized with East German intelligence. Keller continued his spying at Harwell, England's analogue to Los Alamos, until he was found out and imprisoned in 1953. Out of the blue in 1963, Keller's freed in Berlin as part of a British–East German spy swap, but a gunman almost takes him out at Checkpoint Charlie. Once safe in East Berlin, he reunites with his ex-wife, Sabine, and their 11-year-old son, but he's dismayed to learn Sabine has a terminal illness. Meanwhile, Keller wonders why he was set free and why an assassin tried to kill him. Kanon balances a convincing portrayal of spycraft with fleshed-out characters, while vividly depicting the impact of secret lives on the loved ones of those engaged in espionage. Fans of Len Deighton's Bernard Samson series will be pleased.
