Last Train from Berlin

When longtime Agency man Frank Dudley vanishes without a trace, junior officer Kevin Corkery, new to the CIA, must determine if the missing man has met with foul play or has hatched a scheme of revenge against the agency that has neglected him.

A somber Cold War espionage story set during the Reagan administration, Tyler's ( Rogue's March ) sixth novel lacks the energy and excitement needed to make it a real page-turner. Young CIA agent Kevin Corkery is assigned to investigate the sudden disappearance of Frank Dudley, a career agent on the threshold of retirement. As Corkery discovers, Dudley was investigating Alexei Andreyev, a Soviet defector who was presumed dead, but is in fact alive behind the Iron Curtain. Corkery can't figure out what is so important about Andreyev, and his superiors at the CIA aren't about to tell him. Tyler is adept at exploring a world in which peeling away one layer of deception simply reveals two more. Everybody is hiding something, or lying about something, if for no other reason than because that's what they do for a living. Though well written and tightly plotted, the book's tone is earnest rather than exciting, and some of the lies and deceptions are likely to confuse the reader as well as Corkery. Obviously meant to be a serious thriller, it doesn't quite succeed because, in truth, there is very little thrill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From ex-foreign service officer Tyler (The Lion and the Jackal, 1988, etc., etc.): an engrossing cold war drama with a big international cast of characters, and with settings ranging from Washington, D.C., to Paris and Berlin. When Kevin ``Kip'' Corkery, a junior CIA officer and former US Navy Lieutenant, is appointed ``action officer'' to investigate the sudden disappearance of one of the agency's senior career officers, Frank Dudley, he takes on the task with an active independence and fresh competence that surprise his less than forthcoming department heads and superiors. Corkery's pursuit of Dudley and of the truth about his suspect loyalties to other intelligence organizations- -those of both friend and foe, including KGB, MI5, And FBI--is complicated by the shadowy presence of Russian Major Alexi Andreyev and his own former comrades and Western contacts, as well as by the named organizations' inherent distrust of each other. The unfolding story of double and triple twists is revealed through events as experienced in turn by Dudley, Andreyev, and Corkery: ``Every conspiratorial bureaucracy views its failure as its antagonist's victory,'' suggests one narrator, ``whether the State Department in combat with the Pentagon, the Pentagon with the Office of Management and Budget, CIA with the FBI, or Washington with Moscow.'' With aplomb, the various agencies stretch their legs to chase their enemies--and their own tails. Expert and entertaining forays into the outdated mind-sets of early cold war counterintelligence--and a vintage spy story in the tradition of Greene or le Carr‚. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Frank Dudley, a longtime CIA agent nearing the end of a disappointing career, is missing. Assigned to find him is agency newcomer Kevin Corkery. What unfolds is a post-Cold War tale in which Corkery meticulously pieces together the lives of two men, one of them Russian. Cynicism and double-dealing among the old boy intelligence network hamper Corkery's search; only his persistence drives him toward what is a sadly tragic conclusion. Tyler ( The Shadow Cabinet , LJ 2/1/84, among others) is a superb writer; his detail is brilliant. But one senses, in nearly every page, the demise of the old tried-and-true spy genre. It is difficult to shake the feeling that Tyler's talent might have been better served with a different plot. Nevertheless, this is a fine book. Recommended for all fiction collections.
- Chet Hagan, Berks Cty. P.L. System, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.