RED LONDON

On a post-Putin mission to gather intel on a powerfully connected Russian oligarch in London, CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan guiltily befriends the man's lonely, woefully mistreated British wife.

In this sequel to Red Widow (2021), Duncan is sent by her American bosses to check on a troublesome asset/Russian war criminal. But no sooner does she arrive in the U.K. than she is summoned by her old MI6 flame, Davis Ranford. In spite of the trouble their fling got them into the last time they worked together, he urgently asks her to team up with him again. Her assignment is to infiltrate the world of billionaire oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg and uncover his hidden ties (financial and other) to the new Russian leader, Viktor Kosygin. Though Rotenberg poured millions into Putin's reckless campaign in Ukraine, he was instrumental in overthrowing him and installing Kosygin as Russian president following the costly war. Duncan has no problem cozying up to Rotenberg's wife, Emily, who sadly has bought into a miserable, abusive marriage she can't escape for fear of having her husband claim their two children. Lyndsey's increasing sympathy for Emily, for whom a betrayal by her new best friend likely would be a traumatic last straw, becomes a problem—especially when it appears that Lyndsey is making herself available to the loathsome oligarch. Katsu, a former intelligence officer, shows us how intelligence-gathering works, how spies relate to each other, how intelligence agencies uneasily coexist. What sets the novel apart even more is the smoothness with which the author builds her tense narrative and characters—Lyndsey is unflashy but sensitive and principled and good at what she does, while Emily is one of the most sympathetically drawn victims in recent spy fiction.

A strong second installment in a series we hope continues.