Red to Black [Alex Dryden]

Summary:
An unlikely couple--a KGB colonel and an MI6 spy--try to balance their loyalty to each other and to their respective countries during the dawn of Putin's reign of Russia. When Finn goes missing, Anna is left with diaries, coded letters, and a trail of rebels living off the grid as the only clues to his whereabouts. She reads through the history of their relationship and realizes as Finn becomes increasingly disillusioned with London's policies toward Russia, he also becomes increasingly obsessed with unveiling the truth of Putin's ambitions.

I picked this book up because Dryden has a number of books taking place in Russia and I hoped that I would enjoy this one enough to keep reading them. I kept reading this book because, though clearly fiction, it made me feel like I was reading a denouncement of Stalin during Stalin's time. I had the eerie feeling while reading it that this book would definitely be banned in Russia due to the subversive overtones and clear implications about Russia's current president (ahem: dictator). The acknowledgements at the front of the book read: Thank you to the many people in Russia and the former Soviet republics, who helped with this book and who wish to remain nameless. After reading, I understood why. It is a fairly typical spy novel, reading like a transcript of a James Bond movie. Plot points are described through arduous dialogue rather than being revealed, the time line is so convoluted I didn't understand when the "now" part of the story was taking place until almost the end, and the conspiracies are so complex that I was more than tempted to skim entire chapters. The "big reveal" at the end is underwhelming, to say the least, but the story did keep me up late at night in order to learn what had happened. Though I won't be running back for the next installment, I also won't cross it off my list.