Last Train from Berlin — W.T. Tyler

In novels such as The Ants of God and Rogue's March, W. T. Tyler has earned a reputation as one of our very best authors. Whether writing about dictators on the African bush, the machinations of the Kremlin, or the equally mystifying antics of Washington's officialdom, Tyler views our global and national affairs with irony, pitch-perfect realism, and mordant insight in to the hubris and folly of great and lesser men alike. In the Last Train from Berlin, Tyler weaves together the tragedies of two men's lives - one American, one Russian - to produce what may be the most powerful indictment of, and most searching elegy to, the tragic waste of the four-decade-long Cold War. When Frank Dudley, a longtime Agency man languishing in the twilight of his career, vanishes without a trace, a junior officer, Kevin Corkey, new to the CIA and unsure he belongs there among the policy mandarins and "black ops" cowboys, is assigned the case. Has the missing man met with foul play? Or has Dudley, a disgruntled member of the old school and the subject of polite contempt, though still a man who knows where a great many skeletons lie buried, hatched a scheme for revenge against those who have passed him by? The answer - one young Corkey and the reader will learn only at the end of this gripping tale - is as profound, complex, and tragic as the history of the covert war between our century's two greatest superpowers. Treating issues of fidelity and betrayal, exile and alienation, Last Train from Berlin is a memorable achievement.