2018 School Spending Survey Report
The Russian Key
COPY ISBN
DEBUT Laber, one of the founders of Human Rights Watch, debuts with this fictionalized account of her own undercover work in the Cold War era. Smith College student Kate Landau soaks herself in Russian culture when she visits Moscow in 1954. Kate is part of a student delegation, but foils the Russian Intourist minders to have a hot fling with Max, a local student. Repercussions are harsh, but eventually things settle down. A decade later, Kate is working as a translator at the CIA, and Max re-enters her life when she is asked to monitor him in New York City. He is the KGB’s cultural attaché on the Soviet UN delegation. Their flame of passion reignites, and a roller-coaster of suspense takes off.
VERDICT When Kate says “I was in my element, one lie following another, some good, some not so good,” she is so convincing that the author’s persona never intrudes. Spring-loaded with surprises, this debut from eightysomething Laber plumbs the depths of the USSR’s brutality, in a devious tale that matches the best of the TV series The Americans and Jason Matthews’s “Russian Sparrow” trilogy.
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