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The Prodigal Spy A Novel Joseph Kanon Books

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The Prodigal Spy A Novel Joseph Kanon Books

This was a fairly good book -- kept me reading and gave a great feel for Prague under the commies in 1969 and, earlier, the days of the House Unamerican Activities Commission, which are well-remembered to those of us of a certain age. Anyhow, I felt the book was overwritten -- Kanon could have lopped a hundred pages off it. The book started out very strong, but diminished to where the second half is just a half-baked mishmosh of government agents chasing the protagonists. By the end it was all too confusing and, of course, the guy you thought was the bad guy at the outset turns out to be the bad guy. Surprise! I like Kanon -- I enjoyed his book about Los Alamos -- and I enjoyed most of this book. I just wish he'd write a tighter book and give us a less confusing plot.


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The Prodigal Spy A Novel Joseph Kanon Books Reviews

Joseph Kanon has written a thoughtful deliberate novel of the McCarthy period in DC. We move from the 50's to the Era of Nixon to Czechoslavakia and the times in between.

Walter Koltar has a powerful position in the US Government, and has been called before A McCarthy like hearing where he is accused of being a spy. His son Nick, narrates most of this novel, and as a young boy he saw his father being held hostage by the hearings and the journalists. One day his father came home, secretive phone calls occur, a clandestine meeting in a phone booth at the train station, and Walter tells his wife and son he is leaving, forever and for good. His wife is shocked and his son bewildered, but the deed takes place, and Nick does not see his father again. Time moves on and Nick tells us the story of his life, his new step father and then the sudden appearance of a lovely young woman who brings news of his father. Thus begins the story of what really happened during these hearings, and what Nick 's father is asking him to do.

I could guess b y the fifth chapter or so, who done what and why. One of the reasons is that I am a spy thriller afficianado, and I could see the likes of John LeCarre in the rest of the novel. It is superbly well written, and the characters are rich and varied. I enjoyed the storyline until the last few chapters, when the storyline took a diverse and unlikely turn. In the end, the novel was so well written that I can overlook this unseemly ending

Highly Recommended. prisrob 08-12-12

Istanbul Passage A Novel

Stardust A Novel
A ten year old boy watches his Father who is being investigated in Fifties Washington. His Father flees before his guilt and may also have murdered the woman who pointed the finger at him. As a young law graduate in London in the Sixties he learns that his Father is in Prague and wants to see him. Communist Prague is the setting for for his emotional reacquaintaince with the old spy who has evidence which will expose a high-placed spy and his cohorts and enable his return to the U.S. However, his suspicious death so affects his son that he returns to unmask the killer-but not before his own arrest and flight from Prague. The pace hots up as he, aided by a girlfriend with a slight questionable past, try and find the killer-spy.

It's a long journey with many twists and deviations along the way. I can vouch for perfect descriptions of life in Sixties Prague as I was a regular visitor there in those days,and live there now. Perhaps that was part of the pleasure but Mr Kanon IS a good writer and the story draws you along interestingly.
Joseph Kanon has been writing spy novels set largely in post-World War II Europe since 1997, when his debut novel, Los Alamos, was published. That book won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel — well-deserved recognition for an outstanding thriller that was also an accomplished work of historical fiction. Most of his six later novels were equally captivating well-written, well-researched, and well received by critics and readers alike.

The Prodigal Spy, the only one of Kanon’s seven novels that I hadn’t yet read, was his second book. Unfortunately, like so many second novels, it appears to have been a struggle to write. The novel is very slow on the uptake, requiring a long, sometimes tedious recitation of the childhood observations of its protagonist, Nick Kotlar. Only in Part Two of a three-part novel does the action really get going.
Un-American activities

Unlike Kanon’s previous work, which is set in the years 1945 to about 1950, The Prodigal Spy opens in 1950, slips directly to 1953, and then gets really interesting in 1969. The subject matter revolves around the anti-Communist witch-hunt in the United States in the 1950s. The story focuses on a Congressional committee that is a stand-in for HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, which is distinguished by having conducted its affairs in a markedly Un-American manner without having uncovered more than a handful of ineffectual Communists. In Kanon’s novel, an investigation by the Committee leads to the exposure of a genuine Communist spy in the State Department. That spy turns out to have been Nick Kotlar’s father, Walter.
An action-filled spy novel

Nick Kotlar grows up under the shadow of his notorious father and cuts a path through life that is meant to prove that he is a true patriot. He even serves as a soldier in Vietnam for a time. When his mother remarries a wealthy family friend, “Uncle Larry” Warren, a senior Washington official, Nick is happy to take his new name.

When the book finally gets around to 1969, Nick is 29 and a graduate student at the London School of Economics, and the action gets underway. He is befriended by a young woman who, it turns out, is carrying a message from his father. Nick had long thought his father dead in Moscow. Now he resolves to visit the old man in his new home in Prague, with the young woman in tow. Naturally, romance blooms, though not right away.

I loved every other one of Joseph Kanon’s novels. I merely liked this one.
This was a fairly good book -- kept me reading and gave a great feel for Prague under the commies in 1969 and, earlier, the days of the House Unamerican Activities Commission, which are well-remembered to those of us of a certain age. Anyhow, I felt the book was overwritten -- Kanon could have lopped a hundred pages off it. The book started out very strong, but diminished to where the second half is just a half-baked mishmosh of government agents chasing the protagonists. By the end it was all too confusing and, of course, the guy you thought was the bad guy at the outset turns out to be the bad guy. Surprise! I like Kanon -- I enjoyed his book about Los Alamos -- and I enjoyed most of this book. I just wish he'd write a tighter book and give us a less confusing plot.