The Prodigal Spy: A Novel

by Joseph Kanon

Overview

In a time of accusations, treachery and lies, some secrets were heartbreaking....

Others were deadly.

Once, Nick Kotlar tried to save his father. From the angry questions. From the accusations. From a piece of evidence that only Nick knew about and that he destroyed—for his father. But in the Red Scare of 1950 Walter Kotlar could not be saved. Branded a spy, he fled the country, leaving behind a wife, a young son—and a key witness lying dead below her D.C. hotel room.

Now, twenty years later, Nick will get a second chance. Because a beautiful journalist has brought a message from his long-lost father, and Nick will follow her into Soviet-occupied Prague for a painful reunion. Confronting a father he barely remembers and a secret that could change everything, Nick knows he must return to the place where it all began: to unravel a lie, to penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and to expose the one person who knew the truth—and watched a family be destroyed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525621591
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	456,450
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling author of eight novels, which have been published in twenty-four languages, including: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, which earned Kanon the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers, Istanbul Passage, and Leaving Berlin. He is also a recipient of the Anne Frank Human Writers Award for his writings on the aftermath of the Holocaust. He lives in New York City with his wife, literary agent Robin Straus. They have two sons.

Read an Excerpt

February 1950
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Prodigal Spy"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Joseph Kanon.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An edgy spy thriller...[and] a tale of love—between father and son, man and woman—set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable....Captivating."—Denver Post

"Compelling...intriguing...superb....reads beautifully and convinces utterly."—Wall Street Journal

"Intriguing...Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times....The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels." —USA Today

"Vivid...tense...reheats the Cold War with history, mystery and a political blast from the past."—People

"Kanon does a fine job...blending history, fiction, suspense and romance...but what he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other."—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Editorial Reviews

"An edgy spy thriller . . . [and] a tale of love—between father and son, man and woman—set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable. . . . Captivating."—Denver Post

"Compelling . . . intriguing . . . superb . . . reads beautifully and convinces utterly."—Wall Street Journal

"Intriguing...Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times. . . . The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels." —USA Today

"Vivid . . . tense . . . reheats the Cold War with history, mystery and a political blast from the past."—People

"Kanon does a fine job . . . blending history, fiction, suspense and romance . . . but what he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other."—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

From the Publisher

What would have happened if the McCarthy-era communist witch-hunts actually uncovered a spy? That's the provocative premise behind The Prodigal Spy, the second stellar offering from Joseph Kanon, whose auspicious debut, Los Alamos, won a prestigious Edgar Award.

bn.com

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, high-ranking State Department official Walter Kotlar is accused of treason by an ambitious congressman. When a witness scheduled to testify against him is murdered, Kotlar flees the country and is branded a Communist spy, leaving behind his wife and young son Nick, with no explanation beyond the news coverage of his defection.

The mystery of his father's betrayal haunts Nick throughout his life. Twenty years later he is a disaffected Vietnam veteran, in England during the Paris peace negotiations to meet with his adopted father — his real father's old boss and an American representative in the negotiations. It's there that after two decades without contact he is approached by a mysterious woman with a message from his father, presumed dead all this time. Nick accompanies the woman to Prague, where his father is, in fact, dying and desperate to see his son. But he wants something more from Nick as well: help to return home and to bring to light the sinister truth behind his disappearance. In Prague Nick becomes embroiled in a clandestine world where long-buried secrets are hunted and nothing is quite as it seems. Agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain lurk at each treacherous turn, and confusion weighs heavily on every move Nick makes both before and after he takes up his father's cause.

Kanon has a natural gift for storytelling, and if clichés come easily in describing A Prodigal Spy, it's only because it has the distinctive feel of a classic spy novel. Kanon treats the realities of the cold warasanything but black and white, and he cleverly creates an atmosphere of menacing uncertainty that pervades every fiber of his exquisitely executed story. You know that surprises are in store, but the revelations succeed in shocking nonetheless.

The Prodigal Spy is that rare novel that moves like a beach read but attains the moral and emotional complexity of a fine work of literature. It's both a tale of international espionage and a father-son drama, where a young man's search for truths of his past exposes him to unimagined dangers in the present. Boyd Gaines, a veteran of numerous audiobooks, gives the kind of performance that allows you to get completely wrapped up in this intriguing tale — this is one that you'll want to listen to straight through.

—Barnesandnoble.com

What he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

...Witty, tense and vivid prose...
— People Magazine

J.D. Reed

...[O]ne is treated to a very pleasant piece of recent history with an added hypothesis....This book is particularly well suited for the reader who enjoys mystery, but has tired of the technical overlay (e.g. medicine, law; military) which so often accompanies the modern suspense novel. If there are any acronyms or technical terms in this novel, they are totally transparent. This is merely a very good story of good, evil, and many shades in-between.
—The Mystery Reader.com

Steve Nemmers

Captivating...poignant and eminently believable.

Denver Post

Kanon blows heat into [the] Cold War.

Los Angeles Times

Emotionally rich and confidently told...combines expansive powers of observation with keen moral intelligence.
— Boston Globe

John Ellis

Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times—and the toll it took on children....The audio tape wonderfully conveys the tension of living in a Communist country recently invaded by the Russians...The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels. And Gaines is a wizard with those Czech accents. -- USA Today

Marion Ettinger

Mr. Kanon displays superb abilities to create compelling sequences and intriguing characters. . . The Prodigal Spy reads beautifully and convinces utterly. -- The Wall Street Journal

Tom Nolan

Suppose Sen. Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, and other loyalty investigators had actually unearthed a Communist spy during those pyrotechnic years from 1950 to 1954? And suppose this spy had disappeared and was not heard from until 1969, when through mysterious means he communicates from Prague with his grown son and tells him he wishes to return to the United States. On this premise, Kanon has constructed a literate, swiftly paced thriller. As in Los Alamos (LJ 3/15/97), he again demonstrates his ability to tell a story and make his characters come alive. There is suspense, expertly built up; a love interest, in the most approved contemporary fashion; and action, in the classic spy tradition. The political climate of Washington in the 1950s and the atmosphere of suspicion and fear in Prague under the Soviets feel real. A treat for crime fans who appreciate blithe and brittle writing.--A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston

Library Journal

...[M[oderately engrossing....establishes Nick's aptitude for spying in the first chapter....Nick and Molly [are] an attractive pair of adventurers... -- The New York Times Book Review

Morton Kondracke

...[W]itty, tense and vivid prose... -- People Magazine

J.D. Reed

Kanon blows heat into [the] Cold War.

Los Angeles Times

Edgar Award-winning Kanon (Los Alamos) returns with a Cold War spy tale. Opening with a chilling recreation of the Red Scare days of the early '50s, the story soon leads to the questioning of one Walter Kotlar by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kotlar, as the reader knows instinctively, can't be a spy—but when a woman scheduled to testify before the committee is murdered, Kotlar enigmatically flees the country overnight, leaving behind his wife and confused young son, Nick. Not long after, he turns up on newsreels from Moscow as nothing less than a prize defector. Twenty years pass, until Nick is an embittered, restless Vietnam vet during the time of the Paris peace negotiations. His father's old boss, who married Nick's mother and adopted Nick, is one of the negotiators. This man meets Nick in England to settle some money on him, and almost simultaneously, mystery woman Molly Chisholm contacts Nick to tell him that his real father is living in Czechoslovakia, sick and desperate to see his son before he dies. But only Nick is exactly what he seems to be: Molly's actually a relative of the murdered woman from long ago; Walter Kotlar is indeed dying, but wants to return to the U.S. to reveal what happened to cause his defection; and even Nick's stepfather may be a double-agent. Dodging spies and FBI agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Nick gradually assumes his father's mission, rooting out Reds and murderers at the highest levels of government. Even J. Edgar Hoover puts in an appearance. John le Carré and Graham Greene come to mind as the standard-bearers, though Kanon lacks the latter's high style and pitiless worldview. This time around, too, thelove story that so distinguished Los Alamos seems contrived. Still, Kanon is very good.

Kirkus Reviews