The liar How a double agent in the CIA became the Cold War's last honest man

Cunningham, a former correspondent for the Economist, debuts with a poorly sourced and sloppy recounting of the bizarre espionage career of Czech spy Karel Koecher. Koecher joined his country's intelligence and security agency, the Státní bezpecnost, in 1962. According to Cunningham, who interviewed the spy five times more than 50 years later, Koecher, who'd been convicted of statutory rape, signed up to clean his record and afford him more of a future. In 1965, he and his wife traveled to the U.S., posing as defectors, and Koecher managed to be hired by the CIA in 1973. He used that position to feed the Soviet Union valuable intel, but was arrested by the FBI in 1984 and later freed in a swap for refusenik Anatoly Sharansky. Readers will likely question the veracity of the verbatim recreation--including trivial details--of conversations from the 1970s, apparently derived from interviews the author conducted in 2015 and 2016. Factual errors, such as describing mobster John Gotti as having been a neighboring prisoner of Koecher's in January 1985, imprisoned for a murder not committed until December of that year, further undermine what ends up feeling like an unreliable account. This odd story merits better. Agent: Mark Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (Aug.)

Economist correspondent Cunningham pens a satisfying Cold War spy tale spanning several decades. Double agent Karel Koecher came of age in Prague as the Communist Party clamped down on the country in 1948. Rebellious and disaffected, Karel and some classmates were arrested by the StB, a secret police force, for their half-baked plot to overthrow the Communist regime, which marked Karel as suspicious. His spotty record limited his career opportunities, so he became an agent for the StB and met his wife, Hana, who was up for the adventure. Assigned to infiltrate the CIA in the United States, he moved to New York in 1965 and studied at Columbia University, while Hana worked in the diamond trade. Soon he was inside the CIA translating documents, positioned to play the role of double agent. He took information he accessed there and fed it back to Communist intelligence agencies, including the KGB. VERDICT Cunningham excels at his research, placing his story against a backdrop of political events through the 1980s as Karel and Hana reach their pinnacle in hedonistic, high society New York, until it all comes crashing down. An intriguing debut.--Denise Miller

Double-agent spies navigate geopolitical tumult from the 1960s to the 1980s. In a vivid, sprawling tale, Economist correspondent Cunningham focuses on the conflicted loyalties of a disaffected, intellectual Czech couple whose misadventures reflect the institutional decline of espionage as the Cold War wound down. The charismatic Karel Koecher (b. 1934) typified an Eastern Bloc lost generation, pursuing his education even as the Soviets tightened control over Czechoslovakia and daily life became "a grotesque amalgamation of rigidity and absurdity." Following bouts of youthful intransigence, Koecher positioned himself to be recruited by state security, the StB. "In those days and during the decades to come," writes the author, "the Czechoslovak state had no recognizable moral center. Everything was contingent. Nothing was clear." In 1965, Koecher and his wife, Hana, moved to the U.S. under academic cover, leveraging contacts like a Columbia University professor who may have been working for the Defense Intelligence Agency. The young spies made progress in America, yet the global tumult of 1968, including the invasion of Czechoslovakia by other Warsaw Pact nations, increased pressure on them. "The StB did not trust Karel, and he did not trust them," writes Cunningham. As Hana proved adept in the diamond trade, Karel was recruited by the CIA to translate wiretaps from Soviet embassies and diplomats' homes, looking for more potential assets to flip. Even the KGB was impressed that Karel, "with no diplomatic cover, penetrated the American government, and found a secure spot within the CIA itself." Yet he was denounced by a rival who "accused Karel of working for the CIA against the Communist Bloc." Later, the couple was reactivated, as the Soviets "hoped to belatedly catch up to the changes in American politics," only to be apprehended by the FBI in 1984, charged with espionage, and traded for the dissident Natan Sharansky. Though the narrative pace occasionally lags, Cunningham delivers a capable spy story. An often engrossing, well-written tale from the waning days of Cold War espionage. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.