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Title: Way to suck the life out of a dramatic story
Review: Olga Chekhova seems to have had a pretty interesting life. Too bad that Anthony Beevor's plodding prose sucks the life out of the story. Seriously, this reads as if he was simply reciting a collection of note cards. He's really done a lot of research and seems to have a solid understanding of the time and the lives of the protagonists--but he is utterly unable to bring the story to life. This happens, that happens, suddenly she's in Germany, suddenly she's a movie star, the evidence is certainly there to surmise that she was connected to the Soviet secret services. But in the end, so what? Maybe this is a story that just needed to be novelized by Alan Furst or Eric Ambler--certainly most readers will be left cold by this story if they even get past the first chapters. Too bad. But don't pay for this book.
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