Budapest Escape

by Bill Rapp

CIA officer Karl Baier has been running a highly-placed source in the Communist Party and Hungarian government from his post in Vienna for over a year. When he receives a warning that is source is in danger, Baier knows he will have to return to Budapest to find and rescue his agent--if he is even alive. Despite resistance from CIA Headquarters in Washington, Baier and a colleague will have to locate the Hungarian agent, overcome his reluctance and skepticism, dodge Soviet tanks, evade Red Army patrols, escape from KGB prisons, and disobey orders from Washington as they search for a way to freedom. Along the way he will discover support and betrayal where he least expected it.

244 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2019

About the author

I may have spent the last thirty-five years as a diplomat/analyst working for the federal government, but I began my adult life as a professional historian. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in History and German, I received my M.A. in European History from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. I taught history at Iowa State University for one year but then decided to shift my efforts to something less settled and moved to Washington, D.C. That career has taken me to Berlin, Ottawa, Baghdad, and now London, with long stays in Washington in between.

Through it all I never lost my love of history and literature, especially crime fiction, which I often read to take a break from all the history books I had to study for my course work, thesis, and dissertation. Fortunately, I was able to apply that affinity for our past throughout my career with the government, while it also inspired much of my writing. You can see that, for example, in the Berlin novels, especially Tears of Innocence, as I spent several years there as a student and later as a diplomat during the fall of the Wall and Germany's reunification. Even the Naperville private detective series (Angel in Black, A Pale Rain, and Burning Altars) draws on the local history and development of the Chicago area, just as Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald--the two paragons of American detective fiction, in my eyes--did in their novels and stories set in southern California.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book read like an espionage novel with a hint of James Bond. CIA officer Karl Baier is a good main character. I found him likable but intelligent at the same time. The world that author, Mr. Bill Rapp built for this book was good.

Instantly, I was transported into the story. Every location and person I had an visual image of. Yet; I did find myself struggling to find that strong connection to the characters. Thus, it was like I was in this world but by myself. Without that strong connection, I was only half interested in what was happening in the story. Despite, this fact, I did find this book to be a fairly quick read. I would read another book from this author.

[Andrew Sternisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid espionage thriller set during the Hungarian revolt against the USSR. Rapp did a great job of capturing the political climate, but the story struggled with pacing at times.