Reviews for Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War

The average rating for Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-09-29 00:00:00 Bernardo Sebastian This book builds up with a certain cloudy suspense that keeps you thinking, "hey this is about to get really great!", but sadly it never delivers. Honestly it gets worse as the book progresses. Sergei Tretyakov's tales starts out strong with his induction into the KGB and all of the in home spying that goes on against their own. You grow with Sergei through the KGB's treacherous ranks, and you patiently wait as he progresses within it's networks. And finally, you travel abroad with him, first to Canada where he begins recruiting spies and revealing some of his "secrets" in a very entertaining way. From here on the book takes a dive, it becomes utterly a boring mess of "Agatha Christie moments" where uninteresting facts are replaced for more interesting fiction. The book is most interesting when its quoting Tretyakov's accounts of actual espionage (his recruiting of spies, internal operations within the Russian mission, and the disarray that coincides with the fall of the Soviet Union) opposed to when he gets a position in America, and he now only regales you with tidbits of tales other agents have fed him. I also have some quibbles with the editing of the book itself. Many Russian words are not transliterated correctly, and in several cases the names of Russian officials are mangled. The most egregious of these mistakes is when the book talks about KGB Chairman Vadim Bakatin (pp. 126-131). After getting the spelling of his name right the first time, Earley proceeds to spell it as "Batakin" for the rest of the book. I also agree with many other reviewers that an index would have been very helpful, and a bibliography and a few footnotes wouldn't have hurt either. Because of these omissions, the book strikes me has having been rushed into print before it was actually ready. In sum, the book is an interesting read, but could have been much, much better had some of the more sensationalist side stories been cut out, and the author had just stuck to what Tretyakov really knew.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-16 00:00:00 Rob Gorman Rather than spying daring-do, for me the best part of this biography was seeing the Tretyakov gradually lose his faith in Russia under the kleptocracies of Yeltsin and Putin. All spies and defectors seek to justify their actions to themselves and others, but Tretyakov's disgust at the oligarchs who used their power to enrich themselves at the expense of the Russian people and the world community rings true. His warning that Putin does not view the US as a friend or ally, but as a rival and opponent, is as timely now as when it was written.