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Summary
Author Notes
Brian Freemantle was born in Southampton, England on June 10, 1936. He became a journalist and worked for four national newspapers. While the foreign editor of the Daily Mail in 1975, he organized the rescue mission to airlift 100 orphans from Saigon days before it fell to the communist north. Soon afterward, he left journalism to become a full-time author. He has written over 80 books including the Charlie Muffin series, the Cowley and Danilov Thriller series, and 5 non-fiction books. He has also written under the pen names of John Maxwell, Jonathan Evans, Jack Winchester and Harry Asher.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
British writer Freemantle offers grand, literate fun dressed up as a novel of suspense. A young American economist is murdered in Moscow, her hair and the buttons on her clothes chopped off. Her uncle, a powerful U.S. senator, demands that the American government participate in the investigation, forcing an uneasy collaboration between Col. Dimitri Danilov of the Moscow Militia and FBI Russian desk-head William Cowley. Their shaky start gives way to friendship as they discover that each is dogged by personal demons: Danilov is fighting to extricate himself from an adulterous affair; Cowley struggles against booze. As the investigation progresses, sordid secrets emerge from the U.S. Embassy and new murders involve Russian and American law enforcement agencies in some nasty maneuvering for position. Sharp-nosed readers may smell the killer halfway through, but Freemantle ( Comrade Charlie ) keeps suspense high right up through the slightly over-the-top, bittersweet ending. Much of the book's interest lies in its picture of contemporary Moscow, a place of gaudy crime and corruption where even a high-ranking cop must take his windshield wipers off when he parks (``a basic rule of Moscow motoring''), and where flashing a Marlboro pack is the one sure way to stop a cabbie. Freemantle's command of ``Americanese'' is somewhat distracting--``tailback'' instead of traffic jam; ``roll-neck'' for turtleneck--but this is a small quibble about a book that successfully mixes procedural and thriller with engrossing aplomb. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
That writers are dreaming up still more variations on the serial-killer thriller is some sort of testament to human ingenuity. Here, Freemantle (the seriocomic Charlie Muffin spy series, etc.) takes his own erratic stab at the subgenre by setting loose a maniac in Moscow, to be hunted down by a joint Russian- American task force. Who fatally knifed American embassy employee Ann Harris, then chopped off her hair and snipped the buttons from her coat? Colonel Dmitri Danilov of the Moscow People's Militia wants to know--as does Ann's powerful uncle, US Senator Walter Burden, whose meddling in the case forces Danilov to accept the help of FBI agent Bill Cowley. Cowley and Danilov cooperate edgily (it's some time before Danilov admits that a male cabbie has been killed in the same way as Ann), and Freemantle--whose thrillers are always character- driven--limns the tentative dance of trust between the two cops in suggestive detail (e.g., Danilov's fear that his stained shirt- -product of a typically broken Russian washing machine--will diminish him in the eyes of the gleaming Yank). Meanwhile, subplots about marital betrayal (Cowley's subordinate in Moscow is the FBI agent who stole his wife; Danilov is cheating on his own wife) add further resonance. But as the cops pursue clues (forensic, as well as eyewitness offered by a third victim, who survives) that lead them to accuse the wrong man, it becomes clear that, here, Freemantle's plotting skills fall short: Readers may i.d. the real killer long before the author intends, and they'll also see through his cursory attempts to shunt suspicion onto yet a third suspect. Read this for its smart local color and sharp insight into human relations--not for its strained, eventually almost suspenseless, storyline.