The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder

by Alan S. Cowell

Book Overview

"A story that is at once a real-life thriller and an immensely sinister cautionary tale about the new Russia."--Star Tribune In this breathtaking true crime narrative, an award-winning journalist... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385523556
• ISBN13: 9780385523554
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Good content, bad style

The book does a good job of covering Litvinenko's life and a good job of covering recent Russian politics. The drawback is the journalistic style of the book. There is poor use of foreshadowing, much repitition, and quite a bit of time spent on the author. Still worth reading.

Best of the books on this story

The death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko -- poisoned by polonium in a cup of a tea in an English hotel six years after he had sought political asylum there -- has been covered in at least four books of which I'm aware. This strikes me as the best of the bunch so far, although the definitive history of Putin's Russia has yet to be written. (Perhaps the reason for that can be found in some of the contents of the book itself, including the events leading up to Litvinenko's death. Deprived of the classic ending to this true-life crime -- an arrest and trial of the individuals responsible -- Cowell overcompensates with a mass of detail about everything from the lives of Russian expatriates in London to the history of polonium and other radioactive poisons. Sometimes these digressions work; on other occasions they distract. (Does the side story about the photographer who snapped the picture of Litvinenko really warrant more than two or three sentences? I suspect not.) But Cowell does a far better job of weaving together those elements that are necessary for a reader to understand why the Putin regime might have wanted Litvinenko dead. On the surface, it isn't that simple to understand; he was obviously a maverick and not taken very seriously by most people with whom he came in contact. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, for instance, was a far more formidable opponent: probably why she was murdered only months before Litvinenko. Cowell suggests that once Litvinenko began to draw attention to financial shenanigans of Kremlin officials, his fate was sealed; that, he argues, may be the Achilles heel of the regime. Perhaps it is because so many questions loom unanswered that Cowell has had to struggle sometimes with the material at his disposal, drawing red herrings across the path (such as the equally questionable character of Mario Scaramella) and adopting an almost Gothic tone to his descriptions of the very prosaid London landscape. The florid tone can become wearing, particularly when Cowell uses, for the 37th time, the phrase "the day Alexander Litvinenko began to die". Despite these flaws, I've given this book four stars for its solid attempt to tackle a subject that so far has been the domain of less rigorous researchers or writers with an axe to grind. It's to be hoped that the effort to differentiate fact from hypberbole is continued in other books.

The Terminal Spy

The Terminal Spy By Alan S. Cowell Published by Doubleday 2008 $26.95 432 pps. A Review by Colin J. Edwards A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder. The Terminal Spy is an intrigue with a Russian theme where the unspeakable do horrid things to the unpronounceable. I tend to confuse my ...skayas, with my ...oviches, and by the time I have sorted those out I have lost the plot. Mr Cowell anticipated my, and perhaps others dilemma, and opens his book with Dramatis Personae. This introduces us to 40 principle characters. I respectfully suggest that the reader studies these three and a bit pages as it will greatly enhance comprehension of the remaining 430. Cowell's work is at once an important and rewarding example of detailed investigative reporting. Important because it reveals how a foreign (I was tempted to say hostile), country carried out a successful nuclear attack on London, Britain's capital city. Rewarding because it reads like a fiction spy thriller. It will come as no surprise to the reader to learn that Alan Cowell is an experienced and accomplished journalist and citizen of the world. He is `at-home' in London Paris or New York, and has vast experience of the Middle East and Africa. The Terminal Spy is a dissection, in the minutest detail of the evidence pertaining to the calculated murder in broad daylight of Alexander Litvinenko at London on November 1st 2006. It is the manner of this murder and why, that makes this volume a page turner par excellence. No one has been brought before the courts for this crime, but by the end of the book there can be no doubt of the identity of the culprit and his accomplices. The book is very well written. It is never dull - which is quite an achievement when one considers the exposure espionage and intelligence gets these days. There are no loose-ends or innuendoes which in a book like this can be infuriating. The Terminal Spy is an extremely rewarding and enjoyable read, and I thoroughly recommend it.

A Nuclear Murder Of A Spy

Mr. Cowell was a reporter for the New York Times when he covered the sensational murder of former KGB spy Alex Litvinenko in London. The book occassionally packs too much information in its attempt to be conprehensive for the "true crime" reader, but otherwise it is quite readable. While the Russians were clumsy in their murder which the author shows the ease which the police unravel and trace the nuclear poison, the book can not say with certainity who ordered the murder (there are no dearth of suspects). A good beach read for the summer.

A frightening real life thriller

This is a page turner, a "can't put down" thriller of the London murder of Alexander Litvinenko on November 1, 2006. Thoroughly researched, carefully thought through, all its nuances and angles and dark pockets are explored and analysed leaving the reader satisfied but wide awake at night suffering from the heebie jeebies.