The Russian Key: A Novel

“An intriguing spy novel written in the form of a memoir . . . Those seeking a fresh take on the genre will be satisfied.”—Publishers Weekly

An exciting debut for fans of The Americans and Red Sparrow.
           
In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, Kate Landau, a young American expert on Russia, joins the CIA. Drawn to danger and adventure, she hopes to be sent to Moscow, but instead finds herself stuck in an office doing boring translations. When her big break comes, she’s recruited to work undercover in New York City, investigating a KGB officer posing as a UN diplomat. Exactly the kind of work she’d hoped for.
 
The KGB officer is not a stranger. She’d met him in Moscow years before when he was a handsome university student named Max and she was a naive American college girl visiting the Soviet Union on a rare friendship tour. Max had been her first lover. She still treasures the little gold key he'd given her one memorable night in a Moscow park.
 
When Kate and Max meet up again in New York and inevitably resume their love affair, it is passionate, but fraught with distrust and secret agendas. A series of dangerous events lead Kate to fear for her life—and to suspect the man who is both her lover and her enemy. Against a background of Soviet brutality and international intrigue, The Russian Key will keep you guessing as it builds to its shocking and unexpected climax. 
 

Jeri Laber is a founder of Human Rights Watch, where she served as Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division during the Cold War until 1995. She completed dozens of missions, in which she went undercover in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, dodging the secret police and bringing hope to dissidents. After the fall of Communism, she received the Order of Merit from Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel. She has published her memoir The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement and A Nation is Dying: Afghanistan Under the Soviets, 1979-87, as well as more than one hundred articles on human rights issues in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and others.