A Single Spy

February 6, 2017
Alexsi Smirnov, the engaging hero of this impressive spy thriller set in the 1930s and ’40s from Christie (The Warriors of God), grows up in Soviet Azerbaijan, where he becomes a master thief and a master cynic. An orphan, he’s adopted by the Shultzes, a family of German socialists who immigrate to the Soviet Union only to be annihilated in a purge. In 1936, the Russians capture the 16-year-old Alexsi and pack him off to Moscow. Spared Siberia because of his brains and his linguistic talents (Russian, Farsi, German), he becomes a Soviet spy. Alexsi’s mission is to pose as the surviving Shultz son, return to Germany and his well-to-do “uncle” (a high official in the German foreign ministry), then infiltrate Nazi intelligence. Christie deserves credit for making that unlikely scenario remotely believable. The larger plot, somewhat too slow in development, involves the famous meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Tehran in 1943, but what carries the book is an intelligent understanding of political terrorism and the spy’s tradecraft. Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Associates.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
Alexsi, the protagonist of Christie's latest novel, is a wily 16-year-old hustler and thief in 1930s Russia. After he is arrested, turned into a spy, and forced to become a Soviet double agent in Nazi Germany, his gift for self-preservation is tested to the max.The NKVD, the Soviet secret police, gives Alexsi no choice: he either does their bidding or gets disappeared in a Moscow prison cell. In various acts of self-defense, using a concealed knife, he has already demonstrated his capacity for violence. And he speaks German. But he needs to be trained in other areas--including on-the-job sex. "In order to achieve longevity you must think of something that repels you," his instructor tells him, preparing to demonstrate on a helpless peasant girl. Following his training, the Russians send him to Munich, where, assuming the identity of the long-missing nephew of a top Nazi official, he puts his prized ability to impersonate Germans among native Germans to use. After surviving the invasion of Czechoslovakia with a Prussian Berlin infantry unit, he is assigned to military intelligence in Berlin. There, he works under unsuspecting intelligence legend Wilhelm Canaris. Even as Alexsi is sending coded messages about German military plans back to the Russians, he is assigned by his German superiors to infiltrate the 1943 Tehran conference attended by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin--and orchestrate their assassinations. Inspired by an unsubstantiated but tantalizing account detailing this alleged plot, dubbed Operation Long Jump, Christie makes the story believable while treating readers to the escapist pleasures of imaginative fiction. The book gathers steam early on when, escaping a skirmish between Russian and Iranian Shahsavan forces in Soviet Azerbaijan, young Alexsi is awed by the " paths of light in the darkness" created by newfangled Russian machine guns. Christie never squanders that momentum. Alexsi may be an opportunist, but the jaded quality that characterizes many spy novels is nowhere to be found. Part bildungsroman, part history lesson, part political expose, Christie's enthralling novel defies expectations while striking all the chords that make spy fiction so enjoyable.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017

Usually an author of contemporary military thrillers, Christie (Threat Level; The Enemy Inside) addresses in his new novel an ostensible moment of historical espionage, dropped as an aside in a military history, in which a secret double agent thwarted a Nazi attempt to assassinate Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the 1943 Tehran conference. This is the story of young Alexsi Ivanovich Smirnov, surviving on his vast skills as a thief in 1936 Azerbaijan. Fast-forward past a few surprises, and Alexsi has become a member of the Soviet intelligence, training to be a spy. Within a few short years, his skills and background make him the perfect candidate to be sent to Germany, where he soon finds work in Nazi military intelligence, ready to be sent on assignment. With detailed historical events, compelling characters, and plenty of heart-grabbing moments, this novel is intensely engaging from the first page. Alexsi is complex and fully drawn; this is a spy who gains the reader's trust while never showing his hand. VERDICT Christie's fabulous novel of historical espionage will appeal to both World War II fiction buffs and spy novel/thriller aficionados. Extremely well done.--Julie Kane, Washingrton & Lee Lib., Lexington, VA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
Alexsi Ivanovich Smirnov is a Soviet double agent who, posing as a Nazi, has infiltrated the Nazi Party intelligence service. Really, though, Alexsi is a kind of triple agent; his only true allegiance is to himself and to the tricky job of staying alive. Perfectly content as a thief in 1930s Russia, he is arrested and refashioned as an agent. Alexsi rises in the ranks, always taking the next assignment, no matter how dangerous, to avoid a more immediate peril (knowing the Germans are set to invade Russia, he agrees to go to Berlin rather than being sent to the Eastern Front). But now his strategy seems about to backfire: the head of the SD (Nazi intelligence agency) has concocted a harebrained scheme to assassinate Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill when they gather for the 1943 Tehran Conference. Alexsi, of course, is the designated assassin. Christie effectively layers on the historical detail as the absurd scheme plays itself out. Alexsi may be a superspy, but he gloriously lacks all convictions except self-preservation, and in that way he belongs in the grand tradition of antiwar heroes like Jaroslav Haek's Schweik and Joseph Heller's Yossarian.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)