Cover Story — Robert Cullen

Journalist Colin Burke may have escaped with his life at the end of Soviet Sources, but he hasn't gotten any savvier about protecting it; he's still snooping around Moscow. True, the regime has changed - his sources aren't Soviets anymore - but the men in the corridors of power still have little interest in answering questions, and still employ an army of thugs to prevent people like Burke from asking them. For the moment, Burke's questions are almost painfully benign: His bosses at the magazine in Washington want a feel-good piece about Moscow's Jewish community. However, what Burke discovers at a run-down synagogue has little to do with latkes, and everything to do with the possibility that Russia's nuclear scientists are now making bombs for Syria. Burke's got a hot story again, and he couldn't be happier. But he may not survive to collect the Pulitzer. First rate . . . Comparisons to Gorky Park will be inevitable, but in many ways, Cover Story is a better book - Los Angeles Times