It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Mercenary by Paul Vidich.
About the Author
Paul Vidich has had a distinguished career in music and media. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to AOL and was Executive Vice President at the Warner Music Group, in charge of technology and global strategy. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award winning author of short fiction. His novels, An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin and The Coldest Warrior, are available from No Exit Press.
Follow @paulvidich on Twitter, Visit paulvidich.com
About the book
From acclaimed spy novelist Paul Vidich comes a taut new thriller following the attempted exfiltration of a KGB officer from the ever-changing - and always dangerous - USSR in the mid-1980s.
Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world - and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer - code name GAMBIT - has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side.
The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin. But they have no other options: GAMBIT's secrets could be the deciding factor in the Cold War. Garin is able to gain the trust of GAMBIT, but remains an enigma. Is he a mercenary acting in self interest or are there deeper secrets from his past that would explain where his loyalties truly lie? As the date nears for GAMBIT's exfiltration, and with the walls closing in on both of them, Garin begins a relationship with a Russian agent and sets into motion a plan that could compromise everything.
Garin has been sent to sort out the mess of a colleague. In the midst of trying to make contact with a possible Russian defector, who happens to have a pipeline into the kind of secrets that can bring down a country, everything goes pear shaped. Is there a mole? Can Garin get on with the job without his real identity being divulged and in doing so putting himself and others at risk?
At times the reader isn't sure where the most danger is coming from for the main character. His own side appears to be just as invested in exposing him. Is there such a thing as loyalty in the world of espionage and counter-espionage, and most importantly can someone ever be free of their past when it comes to being perceived as loyal to the cause? Is there always a lack of trust when the word traitor is bandied about?
Vidich has a knack for the cold war espionage genre, so much so that I felt myself wondering about all the books in the old school spy genre I read quite a few decades ago. It's an homage of sorts to the cat and mouse games of forgotten spy chessmasters. Quite refreshing really to wander back into a Gorky Park, George Smiley or Le Carre world of spying, suspicion and Cold War tactics.
I would definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoy the very calculated bargaining nature of the war after the war. The insidious nature, which was always combined with a sense of mystery and adventure - almost as if living in the echoes from the World War 2 were a way of keeping the tumultuous times alive.
The author gives readers a riveting spy genre read - the foggy bridge prisoner exchange kind of read.
Buy The Mercenary at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : Oldcastle Books Ltd pub date 18 Mar. 2021. Buy at Amazon com. At Bookshop org.
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