THE SLEEPER LIST

An American gets pulled into a shadowy league of international sleeper agents in this novel.

Michael Trick is approached by a Russian man shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Trick’s parents were East German spies; he is now being activated as a sleeper agent in California, assigned to steal technology from his employer for the Russians. Trick goes to the FBI to report the mission, not out of patriotic fervor, but because his son is very sick and he can’t risk going to jail. The FBI assigns Trick a handler, and the bureau intends to use him to get to the people who activated him and possibly to a murderous Russian sleeper agent named Peter Kirov. Then other known sleepers start turning up dead, and it becomes a race to figure out who their Russian leader is and what the culprit’s agenda might be. The novel presents two parallel stories. Trick gets pressured to do increasingly heinous acts while the FBI trails him to get more information about his Russian liaison. Meanwhile, Kirov manages his list of hits and a domestic situation with tenants in his building. But then Trick’s shadowy contact sends him to kill Kirov. Trick and Kirov have a common enemy and forge an unlikely alliance as they struggle to free themselves from both the Russian sleeper agents and American law enforcement. Oster’s story is engrossing, but there are a few minor defects. Some of the technology and pop-culture references are a little too recent for the era, so the book isn’t always grounded in its period setting. The setup is purposefully vague, and there are a lot of characters and subplots, which can make the tale a bit hard to follow. Still, the narrative moves along briskly, and the characters are complex. Even Kirov, a coldblooded killer, has a compelling backstory that makes him sympathetic, and readers may root for the quiet romance he pursues with a neighbor. The suspense builds slowly, but as Trick gets in way over his head, readers will be on the edges of their seats.

A gripping spy thriller with an indelible cast.