Spy Wednesday

by William Hood

When a defector appears in Vienna with new information concerning an agent liquidated by the KGB years earlier and data on a current top priority American operation, agent Alan Trosper is once again drawn into the intelligence maze

Genres: Fiction, Espionage

282 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1986

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[John Treanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was definitely a winner and right in my wheelhouse. An early 70's cold war spy thriller written by a guy who spent his career as an intelligence officer. A fast read because I was eager to find out what happened next. Am moving on to the next in the series, Cry Spy.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

If there are "police procedurals", then are there "espionage procedurals" as well? Alan Trosper, retired spy, is called in to investigate a wannabe defector who is offering information about another wannabe defector and about a real defector who may be a false defector after all. Does this sound confusing? In the shadowy world of double-bluff and double-cross, this seems to be just another day around the office, or in this case, in the safe house in Vienna. Alas, the Big Kahuna at the top of the super-secret agency that Trosper reports to, does not believe that his favorite defector may be a Russian agent after all, blabs to someone.. and things start getting too hot under the ground for the 2 wannabe defectors in Moscow. Fortunately Trosper can rely on a British friend who was on the ground in Vienna in the confusing days after the end of WWII and who can help him both with establishing the identities, background and reliability of the 2 candidate defectors, and with obtaining false papers for an illegal crossing from Hungary into Vienna.

It was all fine, but nothing special. Not too much tension, no real signs that the KGB is on the trail of our protagonists. An almost casual shooting included and a body that gets whisked off to a crematorium a hundred miles away before the befuddled Russian soldiers realize what they are being saddled with. A typical "OK" rating, hence 2 stars.

[Jason W Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an entertaining read by a former career intelligence officer. Mr. Hood recently died and I learned about his books from an obituary I read in the Washington Post. This book is well written and very interesting with a solid plot and some very well conveyed moments of tension. I highly reccommend it to those who like spy fiction. The only thing that irritated me about this book was that at times, Mr. Hood described real historical events but changed the names of the somewhat well known individuals involved in those events. This was a bit of a distraction but did not ruin the book.