Joseph Kanon's debut thriller, Los Alamos, captivated readers and critics alike and was awarded the 1998 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The Prodigal Spy, set in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project, offers a glimpse at cold war espionage and a very personal story about the effects of McCarthyism and the paranoia that it spawned. Once again, Kanon effortlessly weaves together history and fiction in prose that is thick with period details. The real achievement of the book, though, is the author's strong sense of his narrative center, Nick Kotlar.

The novel begins in 1950 in the Kotlar home in Washington, D.C., as young Nick tries to make sense of the masses of reporters who have gathered outside his house. Though his parents struggle to shield him from the truth, he inadvertently sees a newsreel that reveals his father's predicament: State Department undersecretary Walter Kotlar is under the intense scrutiny of Congressman Kenneth Welles of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kanon perfectly captures the sensibilities of a child with a parent in peril; disbelieving Nick becomes a fledgling spy, trying to erase any clues in his home that might support Welles and his committee. But one night, after an explosive conversation with Nick's mother, his father disappears. That same night, the woman who had accused Walter Kotlar of spying commits suicide--or was she murdered? In 1953, Mr. Kotlar gives a press conference from Moscow announcing his defection. The book then moves to London in 1969, where Nick meets a young woman who tells him that not only is his father still alive but he has been keeping tabs on his son for the 19 years since he fled to the Soviet Union. This revelation draws Nick into a meeting with the seriously ill elder Kotlar and propels Nick into some intelligence gathering of his own--to uncover the man who caused Walter Kotlar's defection and who killed his father's accuser. With The Prodigal Spy, Kannon has once again breathed new life into spy fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley


Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Boyd Gaines (The Heidi Chronicles, She Loves Me) reads The Prodigal Spy in a smooth, even baritone, spouting off sentences with the ease and charm of television game-show host. What's more, his renditions of a McCarthyesque congressman, a sassy young journalist, and a Czech American defector--to name a few--are a treat to hear; not to mention his female impersonations, which would make Terence Stamp from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert envious. A master storyteller and consummate ham, Gaines's award-winning acting shines through, making this edition highly entertaining. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Rebecca Warren


From Publishers Weekly
Kanon's second novel, after the very well-received Los Alamos, is somewhat disappointing. He ventures into John le Carre territory, telling the tale of an American State Department official, hounded by the McCarthyites in 1950, who proves them right by abruptly decamping to the Soviet Union in the middle of congressional hearings into his loyalty. The tale of Walter Koltar is told by his son Nick, both at the time of his disappearance, when Nick is a small boy not quite understanding what is happening to his father, and nearly 20 years later, when he receives a mysterious summons to visit his father, now living in Czechoslovakia, just after the illusory "Prague Spring" of 1968. Walter wants to return home and thinks he has a trump card that will make that possible. Will Nick help out? As he proved in Los Alamos, Kanon is very adept at rendering the feeling and atmosphere of another time, and his early chapters are powerful evocations of that strange period in American life. He is good, too, on the bizarre quality of life in Prague after the Soviet invasion. The book is thoughtful, often penetrating, though at its considerable length, and with its comparatively small cast?Nick; his abandoned mother; his stepfather, Larry (another top Washington official); and his girlfriend Molly?it sometimes is a bit claustrophobic. The real problems appear in the last 100 pages, where the pace accelerates, J. Edgar Hoover is introduced as a not altogether convincing walk-on, and Nick takes a catastrophic action that seems entirely out of character with how he has been presented previously. It is as if the conventions of the spy thriller are working against Kanon's real strengths, which are in the creation of character as forged by intelligently re-created history. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Suppose Sen. Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, and other loyalty investigators had actually unearthed a Communist spy during those pyrotechnic years from 1950 to 1954? And suppose this spy had disappeared and was not heard from until 1969, when through mysterious means he communicates from Prague with his grown son and tells him he wishes to return to the United States. On this premise, Kanon has constructed a literate, swiftly paced thriller. As in Los Alamos (LJ 3/15/97), he again demonstrates his ability to tell a story and make his characters come alive. There is suspense, expertly built up; a love interest, in the most approved contemporary fashion; and action, in the classic spy tradition. The political climate of Washington in the 1950s and the atmosphere of suspicion and fear in Prague under the Soviets feel real. A treat for crime fans who appreciate blithe and brittle writing.?A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Morton Kondracke
There's a sense about this book that the whole business of spying and treason ... wasn't about very much, nothing that people ought to die over.


The Wall Street Journal, Tom Nolan
...Mr. Kanon displays superb abilities to create compelling sequences and intriguing characters. The Prodigal Spy unveils one fine scene after another...


From Booklist
In this follow-up to Los Alamos , which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, Kanon again blends fact and fiction in a story full of nail-biting tension. This time, the action skips from the Manhattan Project to the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s. Kanon asks, What if the witch hunts had turned up a spy working for the American government, and what if, on the eve of the 1970s, he came out of hiding with the shocking accusation that he was the victim of a high-level government conspiracy? Again, Kanon walks a tightrope between historical fact and spy-novel fiction. Walter Kotlar, the State Department official who flees the country during his House Committee on Un-American Activities hearing, seems to be loosely based on Alger Hiss, but the story--Kotlar comes out of hiding, recruiting his son to help him uncover a conspiracy and prove a murder--is purely imaginary, although entirely plausible. Fans of Los Alamos will be pleased to see that Kanon again does a good job of incorporating real people into his story and again uses politics effectively, not as mere window dressing. The novel is a shrewd and often moving exploration not only of the anti-Communist mania of the 1950s but also of its aftermath, especially the effect of the witch hunts on the victims' children. Readers who enjoy Kanon's exciting mixture of the real and the imagined should flock to this excellent historical crime novel. David Pitt


From Kirkus Reviews
Edgar Awardwinning Kanon (Los Alamos, 1997) returns with a Cold War spy tale. Opening with a chilling re-creation of the Red Scare days of the early 1950s, the story soon leads to the questioning of one Walter Kotlar by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kotlar, as the reader knows instinctively, cant be a spybut when a woman scheduled to testify before the committee is murdered, Kotlar enigmatically flees the country overnight, leaving behind his wife and confused young son, Nick. Not long after, he turns up on newsreels from Moscow as nothing less than a prize defector. Twenty years pass, until Nick is an embittered, restless Vietnam vet during the time of the Paris peace negotiations. His fathers old boss, who married Nick's mother and adopted Nick, is one of the negotiators. This man meets Nick in England to settle some money on him, and almost simultaneously, mystery woman Molly Chisholm contacts Nick to tell him that his real father is living in Czechoslovakia, sick and desperate to see his son before he dies. But only Nick is exactly what he seems to be: Mollys actually a relative of the murdered woman from long ago; Walter Kotlar is indeed dying, but wants to return to the US to reveal what happened to cause his defection; and even Nick's stepfather may be a double-agent. Dodging spies and FBI agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Nick gradually assumes his father's mission, rooting out Reds and murderers at the highest levels of government. Even J. Edgar Hoover puts in an appearance. John le Carr and Graham Greene come to mind as the standard- bearers, though Kanon lacks the latter's high style and pitiless worldview. This time around, too, the love story that so distinguished Los Alamos seems contrived. Still, Kanon is very good. ($200,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Acclaim for Los Alamos:

"Compelling. . . . [Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical  drama of excitement and high moral seriousness."
--The New York Times

"A terrific mystery."
--Newsweek

"A well-plotted novel that effortlessly dissolves real people and events into an elegant and moving thriller."
--The San Francisco Chronicle

"Genuinely thrilling.  .  .  .  A serious novel with profound implications."
--The Washington Post Book World

"The suspense novel for all others to beat. . . . [A] must-read."
--The Denver Post

"Read this book. . . . It's a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the 20th century: the making of the atomic bomb. . . . A stunning achievement."
--The Boston Globe


Review
Acclaim for Los Alamos:

"Compelling. . . . [Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical  drama of excitement and high moral seriousness."
--The New York Times

"A terrific mystery."
--Newsweek

"A well-plotted novel that effortlessly dissolves real people and events into an elegant and moving thriller."
--The San Francisco Chronicle

"Genuinely thrilling.  .  .  .  A serious novel with profound implications."
--The Washington Post Book World

"The suspense novel for all others to beat. . . . [A] must-read."
--The Denver Post

"Read this book. . . . It's a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the 20th century: the making of the atomic bomb. . . . A stunning achievement."
--The Boston Globe


Book Description
What if the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s had actually uncovered a spy? The bestselling author of Los Alamos returns with a thrilling new novel of suspense, romance, and intrigue. Washington, 1950. The trouble with history, Nick Kotlar's father tells him, is that you have to live through it before you know how it'll come out. And for Walter Kotlar, a high-level State Department official, the stakes couldn't be higher: an ambitious congressman has accused him of treason. As Nick watches helplessly, his family's privileged world is turned upside down in a frenzy of klieg lights and banging gavels.Then one snowy night the chief witness against his father plunges to her death and his father flees, leaving only an endless mystery and the stain of his defection. It would be better, Nick is told, to think of him as dead.But twenty years later Walter Kotlar is still alive, and he enlists Molly, a young journalist, to bring Nick a disturbing message. He badly wants to see his son; after two decades of silence and isolation, he is desperate to end his own Cold War. Resentful but intrigued, Nick agrees to accompany Molly to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for the painful reunion. Once in Prague, Nick finds a clandestine world where nothing is what it seems--not the beautiful city, shadowy with menace; not the woman with whom he falls in love; and most of all not the man he thinks he no longer knows, yet still knows better than anyone. For Walter Kotlar has an impossible request: he wants to come home and he wants Nick to help. He also has a valuable secret about what really happened the night he walked out of Nick's life--and about the deadly conspiracy that still threatens them.The Prodigal Spy is a story of fathers and sons and the loyalties that transcend borders, and of a young man's search for the truth buried in his own past, when a national drama was made personal and history itself became a crime story. Like Los Alamos, this is at once an ingenious mystery, a love story, and a masterly recreation of an era whose legacy haunts our own.


From the Inside Flap
What if the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s had actually uncovered a spy? The bestselling author of Los Alamos returns with a thrilling new novel of suspense, romance, and intrigue.  

Washington, 1950.  The trouble with history, Nick Kotlar's father tells him, is that you have to live through it before you know how it'll come out.  And for Walter Kotlar, a high-level State Department official, the stakes couldn't be higher: an ambitious congressman has accused him of treason.  As Nick watches helplessly, his family's privileged world is turned upside down in a frenzy of klieg lights and banging gavels.

Then one snowy night the chief witness against his father plunges to her death and his father flees, leaving only an endless mystery and the stain of his defection.  It would be better, Nick is told, to think of him as dead.

But twenty years later Walter Kotlar is still alive, and he enlists Molly, a young journalist, to bring Nick a disturbing message.  He badly wants to see his son; after two decades of silence and isolation, he is desperate to end his own Cold War.  Resentful but intrigued, Nick agrees to accompany Molly to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for the painful reunion.  

Once in Prague, Nick finds a clandestine world where nothing is what it seems--not the beautiful city, shadowy with menace; not the woman with whom he falls in love; and most of all not the man he thinks he no longer knows, yet still knows better than anyone.  For Walter Kotlar has an impossible request: he wants to come home and he wants Nick to help.  He also has a valuable secret about what really happened the night he walked out of Nick's life--and about the deadly conspiracy that still threatens them.

The Prodigal Spy is a story of fathers and sons and the loyalties that transcend borders, and of a young man's search for the truth buried in his own past, when a national drama was made personal and history itself became a crime story.  Like Los Alamos, this is at once an ingenious mystery, a love story, and a masterly recreation of an era whose legacy haunts our own.


From the Back Cover
Acclaim for Los Alamos:"Compelling. . . . [Kanon] pulls the reader into a historical drama of excitement and high moral seriousness."
--The New York Times"A terrific mystery."
--Newsweek"A well-plotted novel that effortlessly dissolves real people and events into an elegant and moving thriller."
--The San Francisco Chronicle"Genuinely thrilling. . . . A serious novel with profound implications."
--The Washington Post Book World"The suspense novel for all others to beat. . . . [A] must-read."
--The Denver Post"Read this book. . . . It's a love story inside a murder mystery inside perhaps the most significant story of the 20th century: the making of the atomic bomb. . . . A stunning achievement."
--The Boston Globe


About the Author
After a distinguished career in book publishing, Joseph Kanon turned to writing fiction.  His previous novel, Los Alamos, was a New York Times bestseller and in 1997 won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.  He lives in New York City.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
FEBRUARY 1950

He was not allowed to attend the hearing. There was his age, for one thing, but he knew it was really the reporters. From his bedroom window he could see them every morning when his father left the house. Mr. Benjamin, his father's lawyer, would come for him--it was somehow unthinkable that he should make the short walk down 2nd Street to the Capitol alone--and the minute they were down the steps Nick would see the clusters of hats swooping toward them like birds. There was even a kind of ritual about it now. No one stood in front of the house. Usually they were across the street, or on the corner, drinking coffee from paper cups, exhaling little puffs of steam in the cold February air. Then the front door would open and they would stamp out their cigarettes, suddenly on duty, and surround his father, falling into step with him and Mr. Benjamin as if they were joining them for a stroll.

In the beginning there had been photographers, their hats pushed back on their heads as they popped flashbulbs, but now there were just the reporters. No one yelled or pushed. The ritual had turned polite. He could see his father in his long herringbone coat drawing the pack with him as he moved down the street, Mr. Benjamin, terrier-like, hurrying to keep up. His father never ignored the reporters. Nick could see him talking--but what did he say?--and nodding his head. Once Nick saw one of them laugh. His father had said the whole thing was a goddam circus, but from up here in the window, watching the hats, it seemed friendly, a gang of boys heading for school. It wasn't, though. At night, alone in the study, smoking in the light of the desk lamp, his father looked worried.

His mother always left separately. She would busy herself with Nora, arranging the day, then stand in front of the hall mirror, touching her hair, smoothing out her wool skirt, while a cigarette burned in the ashtray on the table where they put the mail. When Nick came downstairs she would look surprised, as if she had forgotten he was in the house, then nervously pick up her lipstick to get ready. Her new dress, with its tight cinched waist and fitted top, seemed designed to hold her upright, every piece of her in place.

"Have they gone?" she said, putting on the lipstick.

"Uh-huh. Dad made one of them laugh."

Her hand stopped for a minute, then the red tube continued along her lip. "Did he," she said, blotting her lips, but it wasn't a question. "Well, I'll give them another five minutes."

"They never wait for you, you know," Nick said. It was one of the things that puzzled him. His mother walked to the hearings alone every day, not even a single straggler from the pack of hats waiting behind to catch her. How did they think she got there?

"They will one day," she said, picking up her hat. "Right now all they can think about is your father. And his jokes." She caught the edge in her voice and glanced at him, embarrassed, then went back to the hat.

"There was only one," Nick said.

"I know," she said quietly. "I didn't mean-- Check the window again, would you? And shouldn't you be getting ready for school?"

"I am ready," he said, going over to the window. "I don't see why I can't go to the trial."

"Not again, Nicky, please. And it's not a trial. For the hundredth time. It's a hearing. That's all. A congressional hearing."

"What's the difference?"

"Your father's not a criminal, that's the difference. He's not on trial for anything."

"Everybody acts like he is."

"What do you mean? Has anyone said anything to you at school?"

Nick shrugged.

"Have they?"

"They said he's on trial for being a Communist."

His mother stopped fixing the hat and lowered her hands. "Well, he's not on trial and he's not a Communist. So much for what they know. Just don't listen, okay? It only makes it worse. They're looking for Communists, so they have to talk to a lot of people in the government, that's all."

Nick came back to the mirror, studying them both, as if the world reflected would be his mother's cheerful dream of before, when all they had to worry about was school gossip.

"They want to hear what he has to say. That's why it's called a hearing. There," she said, pressing the hat like a protective shell. "How do I look?"

Nick smiled. "Beautiful."

"Oh, you always say that," she said lightly, glancing at the mirror again and leaning forward. Nick loved to watch her dress, disappearing to the edge of her careful absorption. It was the harmless vanity of a pretty girl who'd been taught that how you looked mattered, that appearance could somehow determine events. She blotted her lips one last time, then noticed his expression. "Honeybun, what's wrong?"

"Why can't I hear him too? I'm not a little kid anymore."

"No," she said softly, touching the side of his head. "Maybe just to me. But ten isn't very old either, is it? You don't want to grow up too fast."

"Is he going to go to jail?"

She knelt down to face him, holding his shoulders. "No. Look, I know all of this seems confusing. But it's not about you, do you understand? Just--grownups. Your dad's fine. You don't want him to have to worry about you too, do you? It's--it's a bad time, that's all."

A bad time. Nora, for whom Ireland was always just a memory away, called it troubles. "Before your father's troubles started," she would say, as if everything that was happening to them were beyond their control, like the weather. But no one would tell him what it actually was.

"You go," he said stubbornly.

"It's different for me. You're just a child--it has nothing to do with you. It's not going to, either. I'm not going to let that happen," she said, holding his shoulders tightly. "Do you understand?"

He didn't, but he nodded, surprised at the force of her hands.

"You'll be late," Nora said, coming into the hall.

His mother looked up, distracted. "Yes, all right. Come on, honeybun, time for school. It'll be all right. You'll see. This won't last much longer, I promise. Then we'll go up to the cabin and forget all about it. Just us. Would you like that?"

Nick nodded. "You mean out of school?"

"Well, in the spring."

"Don't forget you've got Father Tim coming over later," Nora said. "You'll want to be back. Last time he was halfway through the bottle before you were through the door."

"Nora," his mother said, pretending to scold but laughing in spite of herself. "Listen to you. He's not a drinker."

"No, the poor are drinkers. The rich just don't mind if they do."

"He's not rich anymore. He's a priest, for heaven's sake," she said, putting on her coat.

"The rich don't change. Someone else's bottle, that's what they like. Maybe that's why they're rich. Still, it's your bottle, and if you don't mind I'm sure I--"

"Nora, stop babbling. I'll be back. Coast clear?" She nodded her head toward the window. "How about a kiss, then?" She leaned down to let Nick graze her cheek. "Oh, that's better. I'm ready for anything now."

At the door she put on her gloves. "You remember what I said, okay? Don't listen to the other kids if they start saying things. They don't know what they're talking about anyway."

"It wasn't the other kids. About Dad. It was Miss Smith."

"Oh." His mother stopped, flustered, her shoulders sagging. "Oh, honeybun," she said, and then, as if she had finally run out of answers, she turned and went out the door.

After that, he didn't go to school. "At least for a while," his mother said, still pretending that things were normal. Now, after his parents left, the house would grow still, so quiet that he would tiptoe, listening for the sharp whistle of Nora's kettle in the kitchen, then the rustle of newspaper as she pored over his father's troubles with one of her cups of tea. He was supposed to be reading Kidnapped. His mother said he was the right age for it, but after the wicked uncle and the broken stairs in the dark it all got confusing--Whigs and Jacobites, and you didn't know whose side you were supposed to be on. It made no more sense than the papers. His father was a New Dealer but not a Communist, and not a Republican either, according to Nora. Then why was he on trial? Some terrible woman had said he was a spy, but you only had to look at her, all made up the way she was, to know she was lying. And a Catholic too, which made things worse. It was the Jews who loved Russia, not people like his father, even though she'd hate to think how long it had been since he'd seen the inside of a church. Still. And the things they said. But when Nick asked her to see the newspapers himself, she'd refuse. His mother wouldn't like it.

So he sat in the deep club chair in the living room, pretending to read but listening instead. While Nora had her tea there was no sound but the ticking of the ormolu clock. Soon, however, he'd hear the scraping of a chair in the kitchen, then the heavy steps in the hall as Nora came to peek in before she began her chores. Nick would turn a page, his head bent to the book he wasn't reading until he felt her slip out of the doorway and head upstairs. After another few minutes, the vacuum would start with a roar and he could go. He would race down the back kitchen stairs, careful not to hit the creaky fourth step, and get the newspaper from behind the bread box, where Nora always hid it. Then, one ear still alert to the vacuum, he would read about the trial. KOTLAR DENIES ALLEGATIONS. COMMITTEE THREATENS CONTEMPT. MUNDT SET TO CALL ACHESON. NEW KOTLAR TESTIMONY. It always gave him an odd sensation to see his name in print. His eye would flash down the column, "Kotlar" leaping out as if it were in boldface, not just another word in a blur of type. But it was Kidnapped all over again. Whigs and Jacobites.

The newspapers became part of the spy game. The point at first was to see how many rooms he could visit without Nora's knowing--from the kitchen up to his father's study, then past the bedroom where she was working (this was the best part) to his mother's dressing room, then back down the stairs (carefully now, the vacuum having gone silent) and into the club chair with the open book before she appeared again. Not that she would have cared if he'd left the room--it was just the game. Stuck in the house, cocooned against the cold outside that kept promising snow, he learned its secrets, the noisy parts, the bad floorboards, as if they were bits of Braille. He could even spy on Nora, watching through the crack in the door, crouching halfway down the stairs, until he felt he could roam the house at will, invisible. His father, he knew, could never have done this. You always knew where he was, clunking down the hall to the bathroom at night, all his weight on his heels. His mother said you could feel him a block away. It was Nick who knew how to spy. He could stand absolutely still, like one of those movie submarines with the motors off, on sonar silence, waiting to hear something.

Then one day, by accident, he finally saw his father at the hearing.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, high-ranking State Department official Walter Kotlar is accused of treason by an ambitious congressman. When a witness scheduled to testify against him is murdered, Kotlar flees the country and is branded a Communist spy, leaving behind his wife and young son Nick, with no explanation beyond the news coverage of his defection.

The mystery of his father's betrayal haunts Nick throughout his life. Twenty years later he is a disaffected Vietnam veteran, in England during the Paris peace negotiations to meet with his adopted father — his real father's old boss and an American representative in the negotiations. It's there that after two decades without contact he is approached by a mysterious woman with a message from his father, presumed dead all this time. Nick accompanies the woman to Prague, where his father is, in fact, dying and desperate to see his son. But he wants something more from Nick as well: help to return home and to bring to light the sinister truth behind his disappearance. In Prague Nick becomes embroiled in a clandestine world where long-buried secrets are hunted and nothing is quite as it seems. Agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain lurk at each treacherous turn, and confusion weighs heavily on every move Nick makes both before and after he takes up his father's cause.

Kanon has a natural gift for storytelling, and if clichés come easily in describing A Prodigal Spy, it's only because it has the distinctive feel of a classic spy novel. Kanon treats the realities of the cold warasanything but black and white, and he cleverly creates an atmosphere of menacing uncertainty that pervades every fiber of his exquisitely executed story. You know that surprises are in store, but the revelations succeed in shocking nonetheless.

The Prodigal Spy is that rare novel that moves like a beach read but attains the moral and emotional complexity of a fine work of literature. It's both a tale of international espionage and a father-son drama, where a young man's search for truths of his past exposes him to unimagined dangers in the present. Boyd Gaines, a veteran of numerous audiobooks, gives the kind of performance that allows you to get completely wrapped up in this intriguing tale — this is one that you'll want to listen to straight through.

—Barnesandnoble.com

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Washington, 1950. The trouble with history, Nick Kotlar's father tells him, is that you have to live through it before you know how it'll come out. And for Walter Kotlar, a high-level State Department official, the stakes couldn't be higher: an ambitious congressman has accused him of treason. As Nick watches helplessly, his family's privileged world is turned upside down in a frenzy of klieg lights and banging gavels. Then one snowy night the chief witness against his father plunges to her death and his father flees, leaving only an endless mystery and the stain of his defection. It would be better, Nick is told, to think of him as dead. But 20 years later Walter Kotlar is still alive, and he enlists Molly, a young journalist, to bring Nick a disturbing message. He badly wants to see his son; after two decades of silence and isolation, he is desperate to end his own Cold War. Resentful but intrigued, Nick agrees to accompany Molly to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for the painful reunion. Once in Prague, Nick finds a clandestine world where nothing is what it seems - not the beautiful city, shadowy with menace; not the woman with whom he falls in love; and most of all not the man he thinks he no longer knows, yet still knows better than anyone. For Walter Kotlar has an impossible request: he wants to come home and he wants Nick to help. He also has a valuable secret about what really happened the night he walked out of Nick's life - and about the deadly conspiracy that still threatens them.

SYNOPSIS

Josef Kanon's follow-up to his bestselling novel Los Alamos is a tale of suspense, romance, and intrigue set during the HUAC witch-hunts of the early 1950s.

FROM THE CRITICS

Tom Nolan

Mr. Kanon displays superb abilities to create compelling sequences and intriguing characters. . . The Prodigal Spy reads beautifully and convinces utterly. -- The Wall Street Journal

Marion Ettinger

Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times—and the toll it took on children....The audio tape wonderfully conveys the tension of living in a Communist country recently invaded by the Russians...The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels. And Gaines is a wizard with those Czech accents. -- USA Today

John Ellis - Boston Globe

Emotionally rich and confidently told...combines expansive powers of observation with keen moral intelligence.

Los Angeles Times

Kanon blows heat into [the] Cold War.

Denver Post