Red to Black

Alex Dryden's 'Red to Black' is a detailed account of the origin of his Anna Resnikov series, narrated by the then KGB officer as she begins the relationship with a male British spy that sets it all in motion. Can enemy spies fall in love? That seems to be the question over the first 2/3 of the book, and when finally answered things move quickly.

The plot is fairly complex. Finn, the British spy, has been in place in Moscow for an extended period. The Russians successfully use a beautiful KGB agent, Anna, to get close to him to find out what or who he's working with.... not the classic 'honey trap', but nearly so. They develop a relationship, Anna dutifully reports back details to her superiors, but she's not giving them everything. In show more the meantime, Finn discovers a huge Putin plot against the West, but his superiors think he's gone off the rails. He 'retires' as a spy, but opts to free-lance his investigations using an assortment of characters from his past. Will Anna help, or burn him? You need to read Red to Black to find out. It's worth it.

By the way, although first published in 2008, the Putin-related passages and descriptions of how Russia began to devolve from a potentially democratic country to an authoritarian regime that's almost a criminal enterprise on a grand scale couldn't be any more timely. Although it's fiction, the author has done his homework.

I've unfortunately read the series in reverse order. They've all been decent and this is the best of the lot. The writing is fine but the dialogue, as I've found through the series, is uneven, though that may be related to the diverse nationalities of the characters involved. Descriptions of tradecraft seem real, which is always a bonus in espionage novels, and the characters were fleshed out very well. It's an exciting beginning to the series and explains a lot- would've been better for me to start here! show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Finn is a veteran MI6 operative stationed in Moscow. In the guise of an amiable trade secretary, he has penetrated deep into the dangerous labyrinth that is Russia under Vladimir Putin to discover some of its darkest secrets, thanks to a high-level source deep within the Kremlin.

The youngest female colonel in the KGB, Anna is the ambitious daughter of one of the former Soviet Union's elite espionage families. Charged with helping to make Russia strong again under Putin, she is ordered to spy on Finn and discover the identity of his mole.

At the dawn of the new millennium, these adversaries find themselves brought together by an unexpected love that becomes the only truth they can trust. When Finn show more uncovers a shocking and ingenious plan—hatched in the depths of the Cold War—to control the European continent and shift the balance of world power, he and Anna are thrust into a deadly plot in which friend and foe wear the same face. With time running out, they will race across Europe and risk everything -—career, reputation, and even their own lives— to expose the terrifying truth.

My Review: I enjoyed this read more than I expected to, and less than I should have. It's a very, very scary and plausible tale of a plot to use the West's greed to bring it down. After all, Marx wrote, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” He was a prescient thinker, was Marx.

I'm not going to go into the bits of the story because the spoilers would be epic. And also, the story told is either instantly obvious...the New Russia is a viciously capitalist and socially Darwinian funhouse mirror of the West's nastiest, least admirable qualities, and will therefore succeed in out-competing the West...or completely incredible, as to a triumphalist Teabagger idiot.

I'm on the instantly obvious side, obviously, and that's why I enjoyed the book more than I expected to. Russia's manifold social problems are all traceable to its insanely lopsided wealth distribution. That should ring an entire cathedral's worth of bells for anyone in the USA. If it doesn't, then the Teabagger idiot triumphalism is likely to obscure the evidence of a calculated takedown of Western economies.

Anyway. What didn't work well for me was the narrative structure of the book, with its reported-not-experienced quality, and the fact that the main characters were sketched more than drawn. I need to feel some sense of connection, positive or negative, to the people who are taking me on the journey that is a book. Here, in Anna and Finn, I felt I was being told a bit about the people in a not-very-close friend's long, detailed story. That was, I think, a result of the all-flashback narrative structure. The past can enhance the present in a story, there is no doubt, but the past doesn't enhance the past with anything like as much intensity. It simply becomes more flashback.

Overall, in the scheme of things, is this a thriller I'd recommend to a fellow subway rider? Maybe not, since it's so slow-paced. But for me, and those like me who lean to the political left, it's got a lot of confirmation-bias appeal. The fact that the author makes a very strong point of thanking Russian sources who need to remain anonymous is telling. And unsurprising.

And very, very disheartening.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. show less

A very well-written and sophisticated look at an area of national policy that remains off the radar screen: the manipulation of huge sums of moeny in secret accounts. Instead of old-fashioned war, the KGB involves itself in a decades-long plan for internal and external power which is facilitated by the rise of Putin, and by the Western powers support of "democratization" in the former Soviet Union. The leading character could have been created by Le Carre: he is so cynical that he no longer knows where lies begin and end. Yet, he is compelled to act by a sense of ethics and patriotism, and pays for his idealism by being sacked in Moscow. His counterpart, a beautiful KGB colonel, is his match and his great love. Is she working for her show more masters or is she too much in love? How these two individuals function in post-modern times, in an era in which the financial markets have become as powerful as nation states, is the central core, as is the interest of nations versus simple--and naive?--concepts of right and wrong . The author is somewhat pedantic, and there are passages that are dead with arcane expository language. But the overall plot is fine, and the ending is satisfying and surprising. You grow to know and care for the central characters, even if you don't know what is true and what is legend. If you are a student of both espionage and real-politik, this is a wonderfully literate and insightful work. show less

This was an average read. Putin is in charge now and the Communist "red" is being replaced by the capitalist "black". Finn is a British spy and Anna is a KGB Colonel. Anna lures Finn in a "honey trap" but the relationship actually works for them despite the complications of their lives. Finn uncovers a corrupt banking arms money scam that he tries to foil but of course it's in everyone's interests that he doesn't. The layers off corruption and the irrelevance of the truth are pure spy thriller stuff. Alex Dryden takes you into the settings both in terms of the espionage world and the European backdrop.

In Red to Black, Dryden (a pseudonym for security reasons!) has posited a plot so Machiavellian in scope that reading this book at times sent chills up and down my spine. Without a total rehash of the plot, the book follows a British MI-6 agent (Finn) who receives word from a spy deep within the government of Russian president Putin that there is a plan in the works that will make the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe look like child's play. Told mainly through the view of Anna (a KGB colonel whose mission is to find out what Finn knows and how he knows, but who falls in love with Finn), the story takes the reader into an exploration of the world of greed, capitalism and power grabbing.

Once I picked this book up, I could not put it show more down. Others have noted that they almost gave it up -- please don't! You'll miss a story just plausible enough to have you wondering if this could really happen. I thought the writing was good -- sparse enough so you're not bogged down in details but real enough to make it readable -- although I felt it probably could have been a bit shorter and we could have had less of Anna's internal conflicts. Also, the KGB didn't seem very smart at times even though they have networks upon networks of people and agents everywhere. But I think Dryden's got a winner here because a) the subject matter is pertinent to our modern world and b) it's simply a really good story. Recommended for people who enjoy good spy yarns, especially the old Cold War type novels.

My thanks to Ecco Press who sent me a PDF of this book when I got in too late for galley requests, and to Amazon Vine, where I had forgotten that I'd requested this book! show less

A timely, scary and topically current book. The main characters in this 21st century Cold War spy thriller are a female Russian KGB (now something else?) colonel -Anna-who is 'assigned' to be a 'honey pot' to a British M-16 operative- Finn- inside Russia. One is never sure until the end whether the relationship between them is real, or being feigned by one or the other to accomplish their spying on each other. We are led to believe he's trying to find out what Russia's intentions are and why they are amassing billions of western dollars in European banks. She's trying to find out the significance of what he knows, and decide whether she's in love with him or not. They're both trying to feed just enough information back to their show more respective bosses to keep from being fired (or killed!).

Told from Anna's point of view, it does a good job of explaining what could be (and probably are?) the intentions of and inner workings of today's Russian leadership. She struggles with her belief in her country and her understanding of and (dis)trust of her country's leadership. Whether she is able to reconcile the two struggles produces a breathtaking ending.

Once I got into the book, I found it was a real page turner-- to the point that I had 4 pages left to read when my plane landed, and actually sat in the airport parking lot to finish it before I left to drive home!

However, I wish the beginning had been as exciting as the ending . I almost put this down at about the 35-45 page point. It was not developing into anything that sounded like a thriller. A little tighter editing, or even a different 'grabber' at the beginning might have boosted my interest earlier. It was overall a great story and one that certainly will have me following Russian vs "The West" relations more closely. show less

Red To Black by Alex Dryden

The never ending Cold War is the theme of this book. The author paints a grim picture of Russian democracy, suggesting it is a total sham. The interaction and love between a British spy and a KGB Colonel fuel the exploration of the KGB’s domination of Russian affairs.

Many times this book seemed more historic than fictional. Having taught history years and years ago, this book accurately portrayed international events. Reading easily for a historic text it was a bit dry for a novel. The characterizations were colorful and confusing. The subterfuge of the intelligence community permeated the relationships in the book. There was never any certainty as to who was friend and who was foe. I found the book more show more frightening than any thriller. It reeks of truth and accuracy on a topic that affects the entire population of the world. Wars are fought over economics as often as religion. The military industrial complex has characterized the U.S. over the last century. There are still many who believe the Iraq war was simply over oil. When America feels economically threatened we generally react very negatively. The author’s premise may be fictional but if the KGB did subvert the economy of the European Union armed conflict could be inevitable.

This wasn’t an entertaining read as much as a thought provoking, scenario stimulating read. I recommend it but if you truly ponder the direction the author is leading to, it will make you uncomfortable. show less