The Prodigal Spy

by Joseph Kanon

First published 1998

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4.2(2,338)

In the early 1950s Walter Kotlar, a successful American public servant from an immigrant family, is summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and accused of Communist espionage. The hearing destroys the apparent security of his family, a witness dies and Walter disappears into Eastern Europe, leaving his young son Nick to grow up with the public certainty that his father was a traitor.

Nineteen years later Nick receives word that Walter wants to see him in Prague, only a year after the Soviet-led invasion crushed the Prague Spring. He finds his father dying and determined to explain what really happened before his defection, but the reunion ends in another suspicious death. Nick’s attempt to recover the truth takes him through Communist Czechoslovakia and back towards the unresolved politics of the American Red Scare, joining a family mystery to two different phases of Cold War fear and surveillance.