Seventeen Moments of Spring

In the closing days of WW II, top Soviet agent Maxim Isaev, who has wormed his way into the SD (the Nazi security service) as Standartenfuhrer Von Stirlitz, has scored a brilliant success in undermining the Nazi atomic weapons program. Now his masters in Moscow involve him in a new project: finding out who among the Nazi leaders is negotiating a separate peace with the West (which would undermine Stalin's plans for Eastern Europe). Dogged by the Gestapo, ``Von Stirlitz'' maneuvers through an ever-tightening web. Semyonov has been called the Russian Le Carre, but a more apt comparison would be Manning Coles: the novel recalls A Toast to Tomorrow , without the jokiness of that 1940s classic. Certainly, compared with Le Carre's characteristic brooding on moral ambiguities and betrayal, Semyonov's work is downright sunny. He's an expert mimic of voices--from that of the bureaucrat to the inner cries of a fugitive on the run. His historical reading of the period is sophisticated and unideological. All told, this espionage novel is satisfying on every level . (Mar.)