From internationally bestselling author Joseph Kanon, hailed by the Sunday Times as ‘the most accomplished spy novelist working today’, comes a thriller set in WW2 Shanghai, a seductive and corrupt setting defined by wealth, crime and a dazzling nightlife.
From master of suspense Joseph Kanon, author of the bestsellers Istanbul Passage and Leaving Berlin, an espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is swapped by the British for some German students and returns to East Berlin needing to know who arranged his release and what they want from him.
A heart-pounding and intelligent espionage novel about a Nazi war criminal who was supposed to be dead, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and the beautiful woman connected to them both
Berlino, 1949. A quattro anni dalla fine della guerra, la città è ancora piena di macerie. La parte occidentale sopravvive a malapena grazie ai rifornimenti che arrivano per via aerea; a est il desiderio di ricostruzione è compromesso dalla Guerra Fredda. Lo spionaggio e il mercato nero sono all'ordine del giorno. Alex Meier, un giovane scrittore ebreo, è sfuggito ai nazisti prima della guerra e si è rifugiato in America. Ma a causa degli ideali politici della sua giovinezza è ormai nel mirino di McCarthy. Di fronte alla possibilità di essere deportato e di perdere la sua famiglia, fa un affare disperato con la neonata potrà tornare in America dopo che avrà lavorato come agente segreto nella sua Berlino. Ma le cose non vanno un rapimento non riuscito, un agente tedesco ucciso, e Alex si trova a essere un ricercato. Peggio ancora, scopre che il suo vero incarico è spiare la donna che ha lasciato, l'unica che abbia mai amato. Cambiare bandiera a Berlino è facile, ma ci sono limiti morali che non possono essere oltrepassati...
"In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It's a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation; Frank's motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. And at first Frank is still Frank--the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of treachery, still actively working for "the service." He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank's new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive."--
A sweeping novel of postwar East Berlin, a city caught betwen political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation
A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion. Played out against the bazaars and mosques and faded mansions of this knowing, ancient Ottoman city, Leon's attempt to save one life leads to a desperate manhunt and a maze of shifting loyalties that threatens his own. How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to make? Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the aftermath of war, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.
Amesmerising tale of old Hollywood glamour and post-war espionage from the author of The Good German.
Jake Geismar cut his teeth as a foreign correspondent in pre-war Berlin. When he returns in 1945 to cover the Potsdam conference he finds the city unrecognisable - streets have vanished beneath the rubble, familiar landmarks truncated by high explosive. But amongst the ruins Berliners survive, including some he knew and, miraculously, his lost love, Lena. But in the way she would not leave with him before the war, Lena won't join him now without finding her husband and Emil has disappeared from the safe care of the Americans who, turning a blind eye to his links with Hitler, want his expertise as a rocket designer for themselves. Trawling through the shambles of the city, through the illegal night clubs and the thriving black market, Jake discovers that the twilight war of intrigue between west and east has already begun and that he could quite easily be one of its first casualties. This is a novel of war, an action thriller, a tale of raw emotion and survival. Above all it is a tour de force of the triumph of humanity over man's depravity.