Joseph Kanon's debut thriller, Los Alamos, captivated readers and critics alike and was awarded the 1998 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The Prodigal Spy, set in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project, offers a glimpse at cold war espionage and a very personal story about the effects of McCarthyism and the paranoia that it spawned. Once again, Kanon effortlessly weaves together history and fiction in prose that is thick with period details. The real achievement of the book, though, is the author's strong sense of his narrative center, Nick Kotlar.

The novel begins in 1950 in the Kotlar home in Washington, D.C., as young Nick tries to make sense of the masses of reporters who have gathered outside his house. Though his parents struggle to shield him from the truth, he inadvertently sees a newsreel that reveals his father's predicament: State Department undersecretary Walter Kotlar is under the intense scrutiny of Congressman Kenneth Welles of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kanon perfectly captures the sensibilities of a child with a parent in peril; disbelieving Nick becomes a fledgling spy, trying to erase any clues in his home that might support Welles and his committee. But one night, after an explosive conversation with Nick's mother, his father disappears. That same night, the woman who had accused Walter Kotlar of spying commits suicide--or was she murdered? In 1953, Mr. Kotlar gives a press conference from Moscow announcing his defection. The book then moves to London in 1969, where Nick meets a young woman who tells him that not only is his father still alive but he has been keeping tabs on his son for the 19 years since he fled to the Soviet Union. This revelation draws Nick into a meeting with the seriously ill elder Kotlar and propels Nick into some intelligence gathering of his own--to uncover the man who caused Walter Kotlar's defection and who killed his father's accuser. With The Prodigal Spy, Kannon has once again breathed new life into spy fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley


Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Boyd Gaines (The Heidi Chronicles, She Loves Me) reads The Prodigal Spy in a smooth, even baritone, spouting off sentences with the ease and charm of television game-show host. What's more, his renditions of a McCarthyesque congressman, a sassy young journalist, and a Czech American defector--to name a few--are a treat to hear; not to mention his female impersonations, which would make Terence Stamp from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert envious. A master storyteller and consummate ham, Gaines's award-winning acting shines through, making this edition highly entertaining. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Rebecca Warren


From Publishers Weekly
Kanon's second novel, after the very well-received Los Alamos, is somewhat disappointing. He ventures into John le Carre territory, telling the tale of an American State Department official, hounded by the McCarthyites in 1950, who proves them right by abruptly decamping to the Soviet Union in the middle of congressional hearings into his loyalty. The tale of Walter Koltar is told by his son Nick, both at the time of his disappearance, when Nick is a small boy not quite understanding what is happening to his father, and nearly 20 years later, when he receives a mysterious summons to visit his father, now living in Czechoslovakia, just after the illusory "Prague Spring" of 1968. Walter wants to return home and thinks he has a trump card that will make that possible. Will Nick help out? As he proved in Los Alamos, Kanon is very adept at rendering the feeling and atmosphere of another time, and his early chapters are powerful evocations of that strange period in American life. He is good, too, on the bizarre quality of life in Prague after the Soviet invasion. The book is thoughtful, often penetrating, though at its considerable length, and with its comparatively small cast?Nick; his abandoned mother; his stepfather, Larry (another top Washington official); and his girlfriend Molly?it sometimes is a bit claustrophobic. The real problems appear in the last 100 pages, where the pace accelerates, J. Edgar Hoover is introduced as a not altogether convincing walk-on, and Nick takes a catastrophic action that seems entirely out of character with how he has been presented previously. It is as if the conventions of the spy thriller are working against Kanon's real strengths, which are in the creation of character as forged by intelligently re-created history. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Suppose Sen. Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, and other loyalty investigators had actually unearthed a Communist spy during those pyrotechnic years from 1950 to 1954? And suppose this spy had disappeared and was not heard from until 1969, when through mysterious means he communicates from Prague with his grown son and tells him he wishes to return to the United States. On this premise, Kanon has constructed a literate, swiftly paced thriller. As in Los Alamos (LJ 3/15/97), he again demonstrates his ability to tell a story and make his characters come alive. There is suspense, expertly built up; a love interest, in the most approved contemporary fashion; and action, in the classic spy tradition. The political climate of Washington in the 1950s and the atmosphere of suspicion and fear in Prague under the Soviets feel real. A treat for crime fans who appreciate blithe and brittle writing.?A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., BostonCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Morton Kondracke
There's a sense about this book that the whole business of spying and treason ... wasn't about very much, nothing that people ought to die over.


The Wall Street Journal, Tom Nolan
...Mr. Kanon displays superb abilities to create compelling sequences and intriguing characters. The Prodigal Spy unveils one fine scene after another...


From Booklist
In this follow-up to Los Alamos , which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, Kanon again blends fact and fiction in a story full of nail-biting tension. This time, the action skips from the Manhattan Project to the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s. Kanon asks, What if the witch hunts had turned up a spy working for the American government, and what if, on the eve of the 1970s, he came out of hiding with the shocking accusation that he was the victim of a high-level government conspiracy? Again, Kanon walks a tightrope between historical fact and spy-novel fiction. Walter Kotlar, the State Department official who flees the country during his House Committee on Un-American Activities hearing, seems to be loosely based on Alger Hiss, but the story--Kotlar comes out of hiding, recruiting his son to help him uncover a conspiracy and prove a murder--is purely imaginary, although entirely plausible. Fans of Los Alamos will be pleased to see that Kanon again does a good job of incorporating real people into his story and again uses politics effectively, not as mere window dressing. The novel is a shrewd and often moving exploration not only of the anti-Communist mania of the 1950s but also of its aftermath, especially the effect of the witch hunts on the victims' children. Readers who enjoy Kanon's exciting mixture of the real and the imagined should flock to this excellent historical crime novel. David Pitt


From Kirkus Reviews
Edgar Awardwinning Kanon (Los Alamos, 1997) returns with a Cold War spy tale. Opening with a chilling re-creation of the Red Scare days of the early 1950s, the story soon leads to the questioning of one Walter Kotlar by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kotlar, as the reader knows instinctively, cant be a spybut when a woman scheduled to testify before the committee is murdered, Kotlar enigmatically flees the country overnight, leaving behind his wife and confused young son, Nick. Not long after, he turns up on newsreels from Moscow as nothing less than a prize defector. Twenty years pass, until Nick is an embittered, restless Vietnam vet during the time of the Paris peace negotiations. His fathers old boss, who married Nick's mother and adopted Nick, is one of the negotiators. This man meets Nick in England to settle some money on him, and almost simultaneously, mystery woman Molly Chisholm contacts Nick to tell him that his real father is living in Czechoslovakia, sick and desperate to see his son before he dies. But only Nick is exactly what he seems to be: Mollys actually a relative of the murdered woman from long ago; Walter Kotlar is indeed dying, but wants to return to the US to reveal what happened to cause his defection; and even Nick's stepfather may be a double-agent. Dodging spies and FBI agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Nick gradually assumes his father's mission, rooting out Reds and murderers at the highest levels of government. Even J. Edgar Hoover puts in an appearance. John le Carr and Graham Greene come to mind as the standard- bearers, though Kanon lacks the latter's high style and pitiless worldview. This time around, too, the love story that so distinguished Los Alamos seems contrived. Still, Kanon is very good. ($200,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"An edgy spy thriller...[and] a tale of love--between father and son, man and woman--set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable....Captivating."
--The Denver Post

"Compelling...intriguing...superb....reads beautifully and convinces utterly."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Intriguing...Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times....The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels."
--USA Today

"Vivid...tense...reheats the Cold War with history, mystery and a political blast from the past."
--People

"Kanon does a fine job...blending history, fiction, suspense and romance...but what he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other."
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel


Review
"An edgy spy thriller...[and] a tale of love--between father and son, man and woman--set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable....Captivating."
--The Denver Post

"Compelling...intriguing...superb....reads beautifully and convinces utterly."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Intriguing...Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times....The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels."
--USA Today

"Vivid...tense...reheats the Cold War with history, mystery and a political blast from the past."
--People

"Kanon does a fine job...blending history, fiction, suspense and romance...but what he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other."
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, high-ranking State Department official Walter Kotlar is accused of treason by an ambitious congressman. When a witness scheduled to testify against him is murdered, Kotlar flees the country and is branded a Communist spy, leaving behind his wife and young son Nick, with no explanation beyond the news coverage of his defection.

The mystery of his father's betrayal haunts Nick throughout his life. Twenty years later he is a disaffected Vietnam veteran, in England during the Paris peace negotiations to meet with his adopted father — his real father's old boss and an American representative in the negotiations. It's there that after two decades without contact he is approached by a mysterious woman with a message from his father, presumed dead all this time. Nick accompanies the woman to Prague, where his father is, in fact, dying and desperate to see his son. But he wants something more from Nick as well: help to return home and to bring to light the sinister truth behind his disappearance. In Prague Nick becomes embroiled in a clandestine world where long-buried secrets are hunted and nothing is quite as it seems. Agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain lurk at each treacherous turn, and confusion weighs heavily on every move Nick makes both before and after he takes up his father's cause.

Kanon has a natural gift for storytelling, and if clichés come easily in describing A Prodigal Spy, it's only because it has the distinctive feel of a classic spy novel. Kanon treats the realities of the cold warasanything but black and white, and he cleverly creates an atmosphere of menacing uncertainty that pervades every fiber of his exquisitely executed story. You know that surprises are in store, but the revelations succeed in shocking nonetheless.

The Prodigal Spy is that rare novel that moves like a beach read but attains the moral and emotional complexity of a fine work of literature. It's both a tale of international espionage and a father-son drama, where a young man's search for truths of his past exposes him to unimagined dangers in the present. Boyd Gaines, a veteran of numerous audiobooks, gives the kind of performance that allows you to get completely wrapped up in this intriguing tale — this is one that you'll want to listen to straight through.

—Barnesandnoble.com

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Washington, 1950. The trouble with history, Nick Kotlar's father tells him, is that you have to live through it before you know how it'll come out. And for Walter Kotlar, a high-level State Department official, the stakes couldn't be higher: an ambitious congressman has accused him of treason. As Nick watches helplessly, his family's privileged world is turned upside down in a frenzy of klieg lights and banging gavels. Then one snowy night the chief witness against his father plunges to her death and his father flees, leaving only an endless mystery and the stain of his defection. It would be better, Nick is told, to think of him as dead. But 20 years later Walter Kotlar is still alive, and he enlists Molly, a young journalist, to bring Nick a disturbing message. He badly wants to see his son; after two decades of silence and isolation, he is desperate to end his own Cold War. Resentful but intrigued, Nick agrees to accompany Molly to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for the painful reunion. Once in Prague, Nick finds a clandestine world where nothing is what it seems - not the beautiful city, shadowy with menace; not the woman with whom he falls in love; and most of all not the man he thinks he no longer knows, yet still knows better than anyone. For Walter Kotlar has an impossible request: he wants to come home and he wants Nick to help. He also has a valuable secret about what really happened the night he walked out of Nick's life - and about the deadly conspiracy that still threatens them.

SYNOPSIS

Josef Kanon's follow-up to his bestselling novel Los Alamos is a tale of suspense, romance, and intrigue set during the HUAC witch-hunts of the early 1950s.

FROM THE CRITICS

Tom Nolan

Mr. Kanon displays superb abilities to create compelling sequences and intriguing characters. . . The Prodigal Spy reads beautifully and convinces utterly. -- The Wall Street Journal

Marion Ettinger

Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times—and the toll it took on children....The audio tape wonderfully conveys the tension of living in a Communist country recently invaded by the Russians...The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels. And Gaines is a wizard with those Czech accents. -- USA Today

John Ellis - Boston Globe

Emotionally rich and confidently told...combines expansive powers of observation with keen moral intelligence.

Los Angeles Times

Kanon blows heat into [the] Cold War.

Denver Post