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“Red Sparrow is a really good example of an American spy novel. One of the reasons for that is that Jason Matthews, who sadly died this year, was himself a CIA officer. It’s almost always the case that the best spy novelists were themselves touched by the intelligence services in real life in some way…CIA. Red Sparrow is a fantastically well written and authentic spy novel, but it also has those American characteristics of giving Vladimir Putin a walk-on part, scenes of fairly unrealistic, kinky sex, and violent characters meeting violent ends. Then, bizarrely, there’s a recipe at the end of each chapter, which is charming, but quite disarming at the same time. The book was a huge, huge bestseller in the United States when it came out and they made a film of it with Jennifer Lawrence” Read more...
The Best Post-Soviet Spy Thrillers
Charles Cumming, Novelist
