The Sunday Spy

It doesn't take much-a discussion of the pros and cons of microdots here, a chat about the politics of espionage there-for readers to sense the absolute authority Hood (Cry Spy, 1989) brings to his third espionage thriller. And no wonder: for some of his 30 years with U.S. spy outfits, Hood was executive officer of the CIA's counterintelligence division. Now the Cold War is over, and Hood's returning hero, Alan Trosper, though no longer with the Company, is persuaded to act as the contact for a potential Russian defector, Sinon, and to verify his information-which promises to include the unveiling of a Russian mole. Trosper's investigation has him confronting the compromised officials whom Sinon has fingered and, in an effort to reel in the defector, journeying to Prague, where he runs up against an unpredictable chief inspector. While the questions the plot poses are worthy, and the atmospherics dead-on, the novel's structure tends to obscure them, by focusing on Trosper's various searches. What results is a spy yarn with plenty of thoughts, but not nearly enough thrills. (May)