The Collaborators
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Slow Horses meets Red Sparrow in this “sharp, freshly conceived, [and] thoroughly entertaining” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) spy thriller featuring a brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress who stumble into a global conspiracy that pits present-day Russia against the CIA.
Combining realistic thrills with sophisticated spycraft and witty dialogue, The Collaborators delivers a gut-punch answer to the biggest geopolitical question of our time: how, exactly, did post-Soviet Russia turn down the wrong path?
Crisscrossing the globe on the way to this shocking revelation are disaffected millennial CIA officer Ari Falk, thrown into a moral and professional crisis by the death of his best asset; and brash, troubled LA heiress Maya Chou, spiraling after the disappearance of her Russian American billionaire father. The duo’s adventures take us to both classic and surprising locales—from Berlin, to Latvia, Belarus, and an abandoned technopark outside Moscow.
Dynamic, fast-paced, and filled with captivating details that provide a window into a secretive world, The Collaborators is a first-rate thriller “with a propulsive plot and fantastic twists” (Chris Pavone, author of The Expats) that pays homage to both meanings of “intelligence.”
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Get a large coffee and settle in, because you’re not going to want to stop reading this ripping spy thriller. Ari Falk is no James Bond, just a low-level American spy in Latvia. But when his best asset, a Russian video blogger, is compromised, a frustrated Ari embarks on a revenge tour. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, struggling actress Maya learns that her billionaire financial advisor father seems to have died by suicide. Author Michael Idov connects these plotlines in surprising and inventive ways that turn into a globe-trotting adventure with unexpectedly massive implications. As smart and morally complex as John le Carré, as darkly funny as Slow Horses, and with all the fast-paced global action of the Jason Bourne series, The Collaborators is as good as 21st-century espionage thrillers get.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The search for a missing hedge fund manager with ties to Russian intelligence animates screenwriter Idov's bumpy fiction debut (after the memoir Dressed Up for a Riot). At the center of the action is CIA officer Ari Falk, who's investigating the likely murder of one of his prized assets, a Russian blogger who was taken off a passenger jet during an unplanned stop in Latvia and never seen again. Falk eventually connects that case to the disappearance of billionaire financier Paul Obrandt, who recently jumped from the back of his yacht off the coast of Portugal. Paul's daughter, Maya, is looking for her dad, not out of love but out of a suspicion that he staged his own death. She and Falk team up, repressing their mutual attraction as they trace Obrandt's trail across Eastern Europe to Moscow, where they learn of his links to Russia's military intelligence agency. Idov, whose TV credits include the espionage series Deutschland 89, shows promise in his transition to the page—the details of the tradecraft feel especially authentic—but the action lurches along at an awkward shuffle, with a few too many time-lapses, and it all culminates in an unconvincing finale. It's a letdown.
