Customer Reviews

Soul of Viktor Tronko

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book several years ago. One of the better, more cerebral espionage books I've ever read. Been trying to find his other spy book (i.e., "Zolta"), but its out of print. Too bad the author does not appear to be writing this type of fiction anymore--while his nature stuff is good, I'd love to see him fill the void left by Adam Hall.

It's a spy-thriller type book, the story of a journalist who starts rooting around in CIA affairs, trying to find the truth about a man named Viktor Tronko. Tronko was a Soviet, who may have been a defector, or maybe a ruse; in any case he told the Americans some pretty important information. If they believe it. The novel swarms with characters, all of them realistic and lifelike, all imaginative. Although the facts and people become confusing after awhile, the end is very satisfying and definately worth reading to. It's also amusing that Quammen wrote a novel wherein the main character is a middle-aged journalist who enjoys writing about nature (and through that about people) and has a fetish for Eugene Marais. The writing is very good, the story although confusing is interesting.

If you are looking for a more complex spy novel than Le Carre can write, you got to read this. It is excellent, but it needs smart and patient readers to keep up with tiny bits of information lost in a lot of disinformation. The hero is a journalist who tries to get to the truth by interviewing retired CIA agents. The agents talk because they are bitter and unsatisfied, so their reports are tainted. Therefore it is impossible to decide if Viktor Tronko is a Russian defector or a double agent. The journalist is attracted to the case by the tantalizing promise that there is or might be a link between Tronko and the Kennedy assassination, or between Tronko and a traitor within the CIA.
The reading is made more light by the desire of the journalist to go back to his real love: natural history (as Quammen himself did). The real life naturalist Eugene Marais plays a role too, as his work was stolen by the poet Maurice Maeterlinck, another (real) case of lie and disinformation!