Revenge of the Kremlin (2013)
Gérard de Villiers (1929-2013)
Translated from the French by William Rodarmor
230 pages
Intelligence reports of Russia meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and possibly colluding with the Trump campaign have received heavy coverage in the American media over the last couple of years. It can be easy for Americans to forget, however, the broader history of Russia’s re-emergence as an active presence internationally since the election of Vladimir Putin as its president.
The most prominent example of that return to the world stage has been Russian military involvement in places such as Ukraine and Syria. Less overt, but perhaps more dramatic, have been accusations of the Kremlin orchestrating the poisoning of Russians who oppose Putin, especially if they live outside Russia. Even as this review is published, a new such case is being investigated in London: see for example here, here, and here.Among those the Kremlin is accused of targeting are oligarchs who became rich and powerful in the early years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and who have been opposing Putin politically. One such prominent Putin critic was Boris Berezovsky. After being asked by authorities in Russia to come in for questioning in 2000, Berezovsky was granted political asylum by England, and later convicted in absentia in Russia of fraud and embezzlement. In 2013 he was found dead in his home in London of an apparent suicide, though the coroner recorded an open verdict on the death. (These and further details can be found here.)
The earlier accusations of assassination attempts on other Russian enemies of Putin, the long-running efforts by Russia to extradite Berezovsky, and the lack of closure about the cause of his death fairly invited suspicions of foul play. Seeing the opportunity for a conspiracy involving the Russians, novelist Gérard de Villier immediately set about incorporating Berezovsky’s death into a new volume in his almost half-century long SAS series of spy novels. Wildly popular in Europe, the series follows the exploits of an Austrian operative for the CIA, Malko Linge, and is famous for de Villier’s incorporation of current events --- often just months old when the resulting novel appears. Revenge of the Kremlin became the 200th book of the series, and will be the final one, as de Villiers died shortly after it was published.
De Villiers claimed to have developed extensive contacts in intelligence agencies around the world, and so to have access to the background information necessary to allow him to build published media reports into plausible stories of international political machinations. The result for readers are novels pulled from the headlines, but offering seemingly convincing explanations for what might lie behind the news. This final book in his SAS series demonstrates how quickly he could turn around stories from the headlines, as de Villier passed away just seven months after Berezovsky’s death.
The story opens in the Kremlin as Putin sets in motion a plan to assassinate Berezovsky. The scene then shifts to London, where, in the wake of Berezovsky’s death, the CIA calls in Malko to investigate. The CIA has suspicions that the suicide may have been staged, and has concerns about the apparent unwillingness of the British government to seriously investigate the case. The death has come on the heels of a secret meeting between Putin and the British Prime Minister Cameron, and the US agency has concerns that a secret agreement may have been made between Britain and Russia that could jeopardize US-British relations.
Typical of de Villiers’ novels in the SAS series (see my review of The Madmen of Benghazi here), once the basic plot has been introduced the action quickly heats up. The unexpected involvement of the CIA has the Russians worried that what had been a neat and tidy operation --- Berezovsky’s suicide eliciting little press coverage and no comments from the British government --- may suddenly be at risk of falling apart, and so their involvement revealed. Their increasing attempts to cover their tracks and disrupt the CIA investigation force Malko to stay one step ahead of Russian hit men as he struggles to uncover clues to what actually happened in the face of the British government’s active stonewalling.
By fitting Malko’s activities within the broad outlines of actual, publicly reported events and political realities, de Villiers maintains for the reader a powerful implication of plausibility. And since the work Malko does for the CIA is by its very nature top secret, de Villiers has an implicit explanation for why lay readers will not have heard of the motivations and events detailed in the stories. It can therefore be difficult for most readers to avoid coming away from the story with the feeling that, while the particular details may be fiction, the broader conspiracy could be true.
The main attraction of the novels in this series is in fact that tight connection to reality that de Villiers maintains. As he clearly prizes speed to market to be able to catch the political moment and mood, one shouldn’t expect deep character development or literary prose in these novels; rather, these are fast-paced stories of intrigue and adventure.
And certainly that action doesn’t only take place on the streets: readers of others of de Villiers’ novels will not be surprised to learn that Malko doesn’t pass up an opportunity for sex with the women he meets in this story, whether former lovers, new contacts or simply an available escort. Most women apparently find him irresistible, and even those who make a show of playing hard to get don’t hold out long. The sex scenes are brief interludes, but generally aggressive and hardcore, with little left to the imagination.
As can be seen in the picture at the top of this review, the U.S. cover of the book manages to capture both the high-stakes political intrigue as well as the lascivious undercurrents of the story. A short Google search for an image of the original French cover of this book, such as the one at the right, or of other novels in the series for that matte, as can be seen here, makes clear that de Villiers and his editors understood perfectly well that sex helps sell, however compelling the political machinations and life-or-death action may be.
Revenge of the Kremlin is an entertaining, quick read that gives a reader the feeling of peeking behind the scenes of the political situation we find described in current news reports. With de Villiers’ death, this will be the last of his Malko Linge novels; for U.S. readers who enjoy these stories, however, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of the 200 novels in the series remain to be translated into English…
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Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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