Secret Families

This is the final volume in the Secret Generations trilogy, which recounts the intertwining over the decades of two families--one British, one American--through marriage and an ongoing commitment to the spy trade. Gardner mixes just enough fact with his fiction to add a proper air of verisimilitude, and also offers some intriguing speculations (especially with regard to the Cuban Missile Crisis). The story begins in 1964, when evidence surfaces that Sir Caspar Railton, a recently deceased spymaster, was in fact a Russian ``mole'' and traitor. Caspar's nephew, Donald (``Naldo'') Railton and American cousin Arnold Farthing thereupon embark on a long-term undercover operation inside Russia, aiming to restore the reputations of their families. Though the narrative is often plodding, the persevering reader will be rewarded in later chapters with a series of surprises, reversals and the final recognition that, as Naldo suggests early on, ``We're all traitors to somebody.'' (Apr.)