An expert in Russian politics, Knight (Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant
) mars this otherwise excellent in-depth portrait of a Soviet defector with inflated claims. Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, defected with his pregnant wife, Anna, and their young son in September 1945. Gouzenko also had a cache of stolen documents proving Soviet espionage against World War II allies: Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. On the basis of those documents and Gouzenko's testimony, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was able to roll up a spy ring that included a member of the Canadian Parliament. In the U.S., the case "marked the beginning of a red scare." After the furor died down, Gouzenko wrote his memoirs, which inspired the movie The Iron Curtain
, and a bestselling novel, The Fall of a Titan
, which sparked comparisons to Tolstoy, before dying of a heart attack in 1982. Gouzenko's story is a real-life spy thriller, and Knight recounts his defection and its frenzied aftermath deftly. She overreaches, however, when she argues that the affair "destroyed" the "already fragile post-war peace" and led "inexorably into the Cold War." In fact, the wartime alliance foundered on much more fundamental differences. (Sept. 5)
