REAL SPIES PROBABLY AREN'T THIS CLEVER. Jack Higgins's A Darker Place features Communist dead-enders in Russian intelligence, working with the usual cast of useful idiots to provoke the long-delayed final contradictions of capitalism. So there's likely to be a double- or triple- or quadruple cross? No spoilers in Book Review N^o. 18. I note, however, that real world intelligence officers this clever might have long ago trussed Osama bin Laden, spitted him, and served him up as Spanferkel.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)