The New Breathtaking ‘Red London’
BOOK REVIEW: Red London
by Alma Katsu / G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Reviewed by Anne and Jay Gruner
The Reviewers — Anne and Jay Gruner were career CIA officers in analysis and operations, respectively. Anne was formerly Deputy Director of WINPAC; her fiction, non-fiction and poetry has appeared in a variety of publications, including a Pushcart-nominated short story in Constellations: Journal of Poetry and Prose and a prize-winning poem in Humans of the World, https://www.howblog.org/. Jay Gruner served as Chief of Station in multiple countries and as an area division chief, and founded J.K. Gruner Associates, a business intelligence consultancy.
REVIEW — Alma Katsu’s latest work, Red London, is an engaging read, with breathtaking international intrigue, Russian skullduggery, and old-fashioned Anglo-American intelligence cooperation. A sequel to spy thriller, Red Widow, the story is set in the (hopefully) not too distant future, some months after the end of the Ukrainian war in which a defeated Russia is financially devastated and Putin has “disappeared.” Russia’s new leader is Viktor Kosygin, allegedly a moderate, but who some suspect may be more evil than his predecessor. (Old Russia hands might ponder the surname, wondering to no avail if Viktor is related to the former Soviet Premier Alexei.)
The main character and heroine is Lyndsey Duncan, a seasoned CIA case officer assigned to London under non-official cover, ostensibly working in a small public relations firm with no connection to the U.S. government. Her assignment is to handle a highly sensitive, compartmented agent Dmitri Tarasenko, a senior Russian official in the FSB—the Federal Security Service akin to the American FBI. Once settled in London, Lyndsey gets drawn into a concurrent MI6 operation to assess and potentially recruit Emily Rotenberg, the British wife of Mikhail Rotenberg, the wealthiest Russian oligarch and head of Russia’s largest private bank. The Rotenbergs, who reside on London’s Bishops Avenue, aka “Billionaires Row” and one of the wealthiest streets in the world, have just suffered a home invasion by an army of thugs which their security force defeats in a gun battle. Someone wants Mikhail Rotenberg dead, which is curious, since he is reputedly a favorite of Moscow’s new boss Kosygin. (More recent Russia hands might ask if Mikhail is related to Putin’s childhood friend and top oligarch, the sanctioned Arkady Rotenberg, founder of SMP bank, who once lived in London with his wife and children.)
Red London is masterful in its character development, particularly in describing the deteriorating relationship of the unscrupulous, skirt-chasing Mikhail and his long-suffering wife Emily, the daughter of the penurious 8th Viscount Rampshead. For the sake of their two children, Emily, a basically caring person who doesn’t gel with the other oligarch’s Russian wives, tolerates Mikhail’s mistreatment, even as she realizes her original attraction to him had more to do with money than love. In a similar vein, Lyndsey Duncan is confronted with her past mistake of having an affair with a married British MI6 officer with whom she previously worked in Beirut. Though it was a potentially career-ending transgression that led to her recall to Washington, she apparently is being “rehabilitated” as a non-official cover officer in London. The interaction of the two women as case officer and target makes for an absorbing spy plot, with both women continually assessing each other’s character and motivation. The interchange is made more distinctive by the author’s use of multiple points of view that puts the reader inside the head of each woman as the cat and mouse game intensifies. Katsu skillfully employs the close third person and avoids confusing “head-hopping” that can sometimes occur with multiple points of view characters appear in the same chapter.
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As Lyndsey is sucked into the Rotenberg maelstrom, it seems that her primary mission handling Tarasenko becomes secondary, though he provides her some critical information in the end. In their first and only meeting in Tallinn, he curiously determines the time and venue for their encounter. Normally, in out-of-country meetings with key agents, such things are set ahead of time and controlled by the case officer, not the agent. Lyndsey admits as much, but still allows Tarasenko to dominate. This may be good character development on Ms. Katsu’s part: no one’s perfect. But other operational tradecraft anomalies fundamental to the plot might trouble experienced clandestine service readers. These include having Lyndsey follow an official (Embassy) cover assignment in one city with a non-official cover assignmentin London, where her identity is known to MI6, as well as assuming two different, concurrent backstopped identities operating in the same city. There are other twists that seem unlikely to be smiled upon by Langley though they make for an intriguing and fast-moving plot. And a small point: the death of Queen Elizabeth seems to have been overlooked or come too late in the copyediting process, given the multiple references to “Her Majesty’s Government” and “Her Majesty’s foreign intelligence service.”
The great difficulty writing political fiction today is competing and keeping up with quickly evolving geopolitical realities, and Red London is a good example. In her acknowledgements, Ms. Katsu discloses that the manuscript was completed and in her editor’s office before Russia invaded Ukraine, requiring her to make substantial modifications to the story (presumably to the plot). She deserves kudos for accomplishing that, which these reviewers well understand is a challenge. Without giving up spoilers, in our view some of Kosygin’s alleged motivations are belied by the reality of China’s GDP of around $17 trillion and its great dependency on the import of American advanced semiconductors. Still, Red London is a refreshing transition to post-Putin espionage and an entertaining portrayal of the oligarchic diaspora and its international machinations in a complex and ever-evolving geopolitical vortex.
Red London is a well-written, suspenseful, and a fun read, perhaps less as a spy “thriller” than a spy soap opera, complete with a failing marriage, ex-lovers, ex-employees, alienated sister, and innocent children. Readers may come away more persuaded of the personal and personnel challenges faced by members of the clandestine services than the precise intent of the British espionage operation against Rotenberg or the rationale for Kosygin’s vendetta against him. In any case, we certainly hope Ms. Katsu’s depiction of the outcome of the war in Ukraine and disposition of Putin is prophetic. THREE STARS
Red London earns a solid three out of four trench coats.
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