Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Carregando...

Red to Black

de Alex Dryden

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
19313139,747 (3.47)19
In a resurgent Russia fueled by oil money and run by a corrupt oligarchy, a beautiful KGB colonel, Anna, and her British counterpart in the MI6, Finn, are caught in a secret mission to uncover the threat a possible new Russian empire poses to the world.
Adicionado recentemente porbiblioteca privada, Markober, Lairdymck, Djw6473, area26, spicyboo, georgebexley, caro_dimo
Nenhum(a)
Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Veja também 19 menções

Mostrando 1-5 de 13 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
Alex Dryden's 'Red to Black' is a detailed account of the origin of his Anna Resnikov series, narrated by the then KGB officer as she begins the relationship with a male British spy that sets it all in motion. Can enemy spies fall in love? That seems to be the question over the first 2/3 of the book, and when finally answered things move quickly.

The plot is fairly complex. Finn, the British spy, has been in place in Moscow for an extended period. The Russians successfully use a beautiful KGB agent, Anna, to get close to him to find out what or who he's working with.... not the classic 'honey trap', but nearly so. They develop a relationship, Anna dutifully reports back details to her superiors, but she's not giving them everything. In the meantime, Finn discovers a huge Putin plot against the West, but his superiors think he's gone off the rails. He 'retires' as a spy, but opts to free-lance his investigations using an assortment of characters from his past. Will Anna help, or burn him? You need to read Red to Black to find out. It's worth it.

By the way, although first published in 2008, the Putin-related passages and descriptions of how Russia began to devolve from a potentially democratic country to an authoritarian regime that's almost a criminal enterprise on a grand scale couldn't be any more timely. Although it's fiction, the author has done his homework.

I've unfortunately read the series in reverse order. They've all been decent and this is the best of the lot. The writing is fine but the dialogue, as I've found through the series, is uneven, though that may be related to the diverse nationalities of the characters involved. Descriptions of tradecraft seem real, which is always a bonus in espionage novels, and the characters were fleshed out very well. It's an exciting beginning to the series and explains a lot- would've been better for me to start here! ( )
1 vote gmmartz | Jun 29, 2017 |
This was an average read. Putin is in charge now and the Communist "red" is being replaced by the capitalist "black". Finn is a British spy and Anna is a KGB Colonel. Anna lures Finn in a "honey trap" but the relationship actually works for them despite the complications of their lives. Finn uncovers a corrupt banking arms money scam that he tries to foil but of course it's in everyone's interests that he doesn't. The layers off corruption and the irrelevance of the truth are pure spy thriller stuff. Alex Dryden takes you into the settings both in terms of the espionage world and the European backdrop. ( )
  Hanneri | Nov 9, 2016 |
This was not the most compelling spy story I have ever read but I'm always up for a book about modern Russia. I found this to be fairly accurate in terms of location etc. My only problem was that it dragged in the middle. ( )
  cygnet81 | Jan 17, 2016 |
Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Finn is a veteran MI6 operative stationed in Moscow. In the guise of an amiable trade secretary, he has penetrated deep into the dangerous labyrinth that is Russia under Vladimir Putin to discover some of its darkest secrets, thanks to a high-level source deep within the Kremlin.

The youngest female colonel in the KGB, Anna is the ambitious daughter of one of the former Soviet Union's elite espionage families. Charged with helping to make Russia strong again under Putin, she is ordered to spy on Finn and discover the identity of his mole.

At the dawn of the new millennium, these adversaries find themselves brought together by an unexpected love that becomes the only truth they can trust. When Finn uncovers a shocking and ingenious plan—hatched in the depths of the Cold War—to control the European continent and shift the balance of world power, he and Anna are thrust into a deadly plot in which friend and foe wear the same face. With time running out, they will race across Europe and risk everything -—career, reputation, and even their own lives— to expose the terrifying truth.

My Review: I enjoyed this read more than I expected to, and less than I should have. It's a very, very scary and plausible tale of a plot to use the West's greed to bring it down. After all, Marx wrote, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” He was a prescient thinker, was Marx.

I'm not going to go into the bits of the story because the spoilers would be epic. And also, the story told is either instantly obvious...the New Russia is a viciously capitalist and socially Darwinian funhouse mirror of the West's nastiest, least admirable qualities, and will therefore succeed in out-competing the West...or completely incredible, as to a triumphalist Teabagger idiot.

I'm on the instantly obvious side, obviously, and that's why I enjoyed the book more than I expected to. Russia's manifold social problems are all traceable to its insanely lopsided wealth distribution. That should ring an entire cathedral's worth of bells for anyone in the USA. If it doesn't, then the Teabagger idiot triumphalism is likely to obscure the evidence of a calculated takedown of Western economies.

Anyway. What didn't work well for me was the narrative structure of the book, with its reported-not-experienced quality, and the fact that the main characters were sketched more than drawn. I need to feel some sense of connection, positive or negative, to the people who are taking me on the journey that is a book. Here, in Anna and Finn, I felt I was being told a bit about the people in a not-very-close friend's long, detailed story. That was, I think, a result of the all-flashback narrative structure. The past can enhance the present in a story, there is no doubt, but the past doesn't enhance the past with anything like as much intensity. It simply becomes more flashback.

Overall, in the scheme of things, is this a thriller I'd recommend to a fellow subway rider? Maybe not, since it's so slow-paced. But for me, and those like me who lean to the political left, it's got a lot of confirmation-bias appeal. The fact that the author makes a very strong point of thanking Russian sources who need to remain anonymous is telling. And unsurprising.

And very, very disheartening.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ( )
2 vote richardderus | Nov 23, 2013 |
A very well-written and sophisticated look at an area of national policy that remains off the radar screen: the manipulation of huge sums of moeny in secret accounts. Instead of old-fashioned war, the KGB involves itself in a decades-long plan for internal and external power which is facilitated by the rise of Putin, and by the Western powers support of "democratization" in the former Soviet Union. The leading character could have been created by Le Carre: he is so cynical that he no longer knows where lies begin and end. Yet, he is compelled to act by a sense of ethics and patriotism, and pays for his idealism by being sacked in Moscow. His counterpart, a beautiful KGB colonel, is his match and his great love. Is she working for her masters or is she too much in love? How these two individuals function in post-modern times, in an era in which the financial markets have become as powerful as nation states, is the central core, as is the interest of nations versus simple--and naive?--concepts of right and wrong . The author is somewhat pedantic, and there are passages that are dead with arcane expository language. But the overall plot is fine, and the ending is satisfying and surprising. You grow to know and care for the central characters, even if you don't know what is true and what is legend. If you are a student of both espionage and real-politik, this is a wonderfully literate and insightful work. ( )
1 vote neddludd | Jul 5, 2012 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 13 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha

Pertence à série

Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Lugares importantes
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Eventos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Idioma original
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

In a resurgent Russia fueled by oil money and run by a corrupt oligarchy, a beautiful KGB colonel, Anna, and her British counterpart in the MI6, Finn, are caught in a secret mission to uncover the threat a possible new Russian empire poses to the world.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Links rápidos

Avaliação

Média: (3.47)
0.5
1
1.5
2 7
2.5 1
3 8
3.5 9
4 15
4.5 2
5 3

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,253,541 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível