The Persian Gamble

In bestseller Rosenberg’s solid sequel to 2018’s The Kremlin Conspiracy, Oleg Kraskin, a former corporate lawyer who’s now a senior aide to his father-in-law, President Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov of the Russian Federation, has given former Secret Service agent Marcus Ryker highly classified information—the war plan for the imminent invasion of NATO nations Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Eager to prevent a war that’s sure to spread worldwide, Oleg decides he must take desperate measures to stop Luganov. Meanwhile, the Russians and the North Koreans, who have developed a ballistic missile that can reach America, sign a mutual defense pact. The North Koreans, who have pretended to give up their nuclear arsenal, are also secretly planning to sell missiles to Iran. Marcus joins Oleg in Russia, and the two of them end up going on the run with the Moscow CIA station chief, Jenny Morris. Their dash across Russia provides the book’s most exciting moments, but Rosenberg also handles multiple subplots well, the search for Iranian missiles among them. Shelve this average example of the genre right in the middle of similarly themed thrillers. (Mar.)