The Relic
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
When Yuri Varienski, a Ukranian emigré, dies in Jersey, he leaves his daughter Lucy an object—and a great responsibility. Lucy must take the gold filigree cross she is bequeathed to Geneva, and deliver it into the hands of exiled former dissident leader, Volkov. Lucy innocently accepts her father's charge. But Volkov, broken by imprisonment, is not the man he used to be. And there are other people who wish to possess the cross too. For the object Lucy carries is the legendary relic, St. Vladimir's Cross, and it has the power to unite or divide the volatile Soviet Union.
Lucy soon realizes that she will have to make sacrifices—of her home, her heart, and maybe even her life—if she is going to fulfill her father's last wish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This cluttered romantic suspense novel centers on a czarist relic with a symbolic power so strong that it could topple the Soviet government. The ancient St. Vladimir's cross is in the possession of a Ukrainian emigre whose dying wish is that his daughter, Lucy, deliver the artifact to Ivan Volkov, a Soviet dissident exiled to Geneva. But Volkov, diminished by alcohol abuse and his psychiatrist/secret agent wife's brainwashing tactics, is in no shape to lead a fight for freedom--until he and Lucy fall in love. Determined to restore the bejeweled treasure to the oppressed Soviet masses, the couple must escape secret agents, Volkov's treacherous wife and a trained psychokiller. Anthony makes a prodigious effort to render her tale of political intrigue in the age of glasnost both urgent and plausible. But Volkov is not a convincing revolutionary; one doubts that his pale platitudes (``Liberty is the life of the human soul'') would spark a rebellion. And though the numerous subplots ultimately come together as neatly as nesting Russian dolls, they command little interest along the way. With her 31st book, Anthony lays an egg--and it's not Faberge. BOMC alternate.
