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    Agent 6
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    Agent 6
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    Agent 6
    Audiobook13 hours

    Agent 6

    Written by Tom Rob Smith

    Narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    THREE DECADES.
    TWO MURDERS.
    ONE CONSPIRACY.

    WHO IS AGENT 6?

    Tom Rob Smith's debut, Child 44, was an immediate publishing sensation and marked the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction. Named one of top 100 thrillers of all time by NPR, it hit bestseller lists around the world, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
    In this spellbinding new novel, Tom Rob Smith probes the tenuous border between love and obsession as Leo Demidov struggles to untangle the threads of a devastating conspiracy that shatters everything he holds dear. Deftly capturing the claustrophobic intensity of the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it's at once a heart-pounding thriller and a richly atmospheric novel of extraordinary depth....

    AGENT 6

    Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to New York City, he is immediately suspicious.

    Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy.

    In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world--from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York--in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateJan 5, 2012
    ISBN9781611139914
    Unavailable
    Agent 6
    Author

    Tom Rob Smith

    Tom Rob Smith is the author of the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy. Child 44 itself was a global publishing sensation, selling over two million copies. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and won the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His most recent novel, The Farm, was a #1 international bestseller. Tom also writes for television and won a Writer’s Guild Award for best adapted series and an Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. He is also the creator and executive producer of FX’s suspense thriller series Class of ’09.

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    Reviews for Agent 6

    3.5/5

    277 ratings33 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      Good story.....page turner
    • 4/5
      Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to New York City, he is immediately suspicious.Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy.In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world--from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York--in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6.My ReviewThis book was a good ending for the trilogy. It was very atmospheric and I loved the history of Leo in the past from 1950 through 1980. We received lots of information of the brutal Soviet Union of the 1950's. Some parts held me on the edge of my seat. The book flowed very easily and I liked the short chapters. The story does leave you wanting to know more about his family and what happens to them in the future. I found it to be a very interesting spy story and would highly recommend this trilogy.
    • 5/5
      This is the third novel in the author's best-selling trilogy beginning with Child 44, centred around the life of (latterly reformed) KGB man Leo Demidov. This novel actually covers a period of over 30 years, beginning when Leo is a young and still idealistic KGB officer under Stalin in 1950, convinced that spying on citizens who keep a diary is a justified activity for the State he serves. He also acts as escort to a visiting Communist celebrity from the USA, an Afro-American singer Jesse Austin (clearly based on Paul Robeson). 15 years later his wife and daughters get a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit New York as part of a peace delegation and Austin is once again involved. I don't want to give away too many plot details but it involves campaigns of dirty tricks and deceit, assassinations, "ordinary" murders, international cover ups, and a second half of the novel set in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1980-81 where Leo is an informal adviser to the regime. A great deal happens throughout this near 500 page novel and there is a wide range of colourful, tragic and ruthless characters, Soviet, Afghan and American. The ethos of the cold war, the desperate ideological issues, the different perceptions of treachery and loyalty involved, come across clearly and with conviction. The ending of the novel is sad, albeit tinged with some happiness, and provides a slightly ambiguous end to Leo's run of luck, but in a way that seems to make it clear there won't be any more novels featuring him, which I slightly regret. An excellent read.
    • 4/5
      Vivid and readable. Excellent feeling of what it must be like inside a totalitarian state. Slightly annoying "game of two halves (the Paul Robeson story and the much later story of the hero's getting his revenge). Sudden surges of violence very credible. Quirky titling it Agent 6 when A6 is really only a minor character. As light reading with a punch and a documentary strand, it's pretty good.
    • 3/5
      3rd in the trilogy and most contrvied plot.
    • 3/5
      Agent 6 is the third & final installment of the Leo Demidov trilogy. While Leo remains behind in Russia, his wife & two daughters have the opportunity to travel to the United States as part of a "Peace Tour". However, there is more going on under the surface, and events suddenly take a tragic turn, leaving Leo reeling in grief. Despite Leo's determined attempts to travel to the U.S. to find out the truth of what really happened, he is denied and eventually finds himself working in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, living in a partial opium-haze in order to dull his memories. The fact that I was able to read each book in this trilogy back-to-back made it flow a little more coherently for me. However, despite the hype of book #1, I never really was able to feel like I was "into" this series. I would agree that the first book was the best. All three have a rather dark, political conspiracy type theme, and I typically don't have anything against books of that type, but there was something about these that never really grabbed me. This third book in particular, had a promising beginning, and the ending, though rushed, wasn't too bad. But the middle, the portions in Afghanistan, just dragged on and on, and I flirted with giving up. I don't think this was a bad series, but I don't think it resonated much with me personally. Too dark, too depressing, too violent.
    • 3/5
      Although not as gripping as "Child 44" this is still a satisfying conclusion to the series.
    • 2/5
      I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with Agent 6. After completely enjoying Child 44 and its sequel The Secret Speech I was looking forward to the finale of the Leo Demidov trilogy. Unfortunately, it feels like Smith wrote a story that turned out to be less than 200 pages long, so he dropped a completely different story right in the middle of it to fill out the pages. The result is that Leo is absent from the entire first half of the book. When he does show up, rather than work towards a resolution of the situation, he goes off in the opposite direction for a couple of hundred pages. Finally, in the last 50 pages, everything comes together with so many coincidences lining up to get us there that it almost becomes comical. Punctuate it with a unsavory ending and I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth with this third installment. Definitely pick up the first two in the series. They are well worth a read. As for Agent 6, better to 86 it.
    • 5/5
      Tom Rob Smith has had an auspicious beginning to his literary career. Child 44 and The Secret Speech were both excellent, and Agent 6 is a worthy successor.

      The beginning of Agent 6 was a little disjointed. I don't like to disclose plot details, but Soviet secret police, American communists, torture, propaganda, time jumps, and location changes all contributed to what initially struck me as too broad a palette for the story. However, it settled down and became quite a great read. An interesting side-note is that the description of the Russian problems in Afghanistan seems to reinforce some of the issues we've had in that country. It also brought back a lot of memories of the cold-war era- not exactly the 'good old days', but at least we knew who our enemies were.

      I don't think this is the best of his 3 novels, but it's really good. Agent 6 is well-written and scripted, and Mr. Smith does a good job developing his characters and making us care about them.
    • 3/5
      Parts of it lived up to the expectations created by Smith's earlier Leo Demidov books, other parts didn't. The parts that did were marvelous, the parts that didn't were rather dull.
    • 2/5
      on the whole this was a bit of a disappointment - it starts of well but then by the time the characters get to America it keeps on rambling on and on and ever on the actual words 'Agent 6' do not appear until almost the end of the story and even he is a disappointment! I kept reading it only because I didn't have anything else too read. I've read Child 44 and that was a damn fine read but this - ???
    • 3/5
      While I enjoyed Agent 6 ( and have no idea why it was called Agent 6 ) it was an enjoyable read. However, I am pleased that this was book three of the trilogy.
    • 3/5
      Well, this read like a combination of the first two books in this trilogy. The New York parts (the beginning and the end) were good like the first book. The middle was bad, like the second book. So overall, it was so-so.
    • 4/5
      With this final installment, Tom Rob Smith ties off his espionage trilogy involving the trials and tribulations of Russian State Security Officer Leo Demidov.The journey has taken Leo from his cushy Moscow berth as a favored and faithful agent to demotion and denouncement under Stalin's rigorous regime. And now, in the deceptively ambivalent grip of Cold War conflict, a conspiracy unravels in America that will shake Demidov to the core and transport us even further afield to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Smith has done some impressive work here. The series is thoughtful, the characters are deep and convincingly drawn, the mysteries and miseries engaging enough to have you keep the books close at hand.
    • 2/5
      Leo Demidov has once again changed careers and is no longer a member of Russia’s secret police but because of his former career is he is still very much on the government radar. When his wife Raisa and his daughters, Elena and Zoya, are invited to take part in a “Peace Tour” to New York City Leo is informed that he cannot travel with them. Leo does not want his family to go but his wife and daughters are committed to participating. Leo’s instinct was correct and tragedy strikes leaving Leo alone and totally devastated. Leo wants nothing more than to travel to New York City to use his investigative talents to determine what really happened, but of course his request is once again denied. Leo’s disappointment and grief do not decrease and 15 years later he finds himself in Afghanistan, addicted to drugs and aiding in fighting a war he cares nothing about. During his adventures he meets two young women who help turn his life around.

      The unlikely trio finally do end up in New York City where Leo finally uncovers the answers he has waited so long to find.

      This is the final instalment in the Child 44 trilogy, a series that started with a non-stop, page-turning story I had a hard time putting down. Mr. Smith’s writing talents, exciting action and extensive research carry through to both of the sequels but unfortunately that is where the comparisons end. I found this book was rather disappointing. It started out wonderfully, but as Leo’s personal decline continues through the book so did the story. Spanning almost 30 years, it seemed as if Mr. Smith ran out of steam and wanted to move the story along to get it done. Leo’s family takes a back seat in this book while Leo travels the world. That was too bad because it would have been nice to learn more about the characters I became invested in during the first two books. With the introduction of the two women in Afghanistan, once again, it seemed as if Mr. Smith tired of Zoya and Elena and, for a little change, simply substituted two new women into Leo’s life.

      Admittedly, I did not enjoy this one as much as Child 44 or even The Secret Speech but I did find it worth reading as a conclusion to the series.
    • 5/5
      I have read neither CHILD 44 nor its sequel THE SECRET SPEECH so for me AGENT 6 had to make sense as a stand alone, and it did, although it did make me feel that I should go back and read the other two at some stage.I was unprepared for the timespan of the novel and wasn't helped by chapters that are headed "Same Day" or "One Month Later". I do understand that the action basically takes place between 1965 and and 1981/2 and that the location moves from Russia to Afghanistan to New York, following Leo Demidov's quest to clear his wife's name. It explores the political connections between Russia, Afghanistan and America, and the truly awful ramifications of the manipulation of ordinary lives by a few secret agents from both sides. The conspiracy that first affects Demidov's wife and daughters in 1965 is still alive in 1981.On another plane it balances love of the family against patriotism. There are at least two examples of young people who put aside familial loyalties for what they see as the higher level of patriotism. Demidov's loyalty to his family is contrasted with the betrayal of an Afghani girl's parents.I don't know that you can ever say you enjoy this sort of novel, but I felt that it did add depth to my basic knowledge.
    • 4/5
      Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith is the final book of the trilogy and probably my least favourite. However, I did enjoy the book and highly recommend the Child 44 trilogy.
    • 4/5
      This is the third and what seems like the final novel of the Leo Demidov series. Overall very pleased with the book, did start a bit slow but caught some faster pace the second half of the book. If you have not read any of the other books you will be ok as the author didn't reference the previous books that much. Wish there was a bit more to the final conclusion with Leo???
    • 4/5
      The final book in Tom Rob Smith's trilogy about Leo Demidov covers the longest span of time, reaching back to Leo's days in the KGB before he met his wife, Raisa. At the time of their first meeting, Leo had been assigned as an escort for visiting African-American singer Jesse Austin, whose character is obviously based on Paul Robeson. Then the story skips ahead to the 1960s, a few years after the events of book 2 in the trilogy. The action centers on New York City and the United Nations, where Leo's wife and daughters are taking part in a cultural exchange concert. Once again, Jesse Austin will be drawn into Leo's life with tragic consequences. The final section of the book takes place several years later, after Leo's failed attempt to discover the truth behind the tragedy that changed his life. He's been sent to Afghanistan as punishment, and a young female trainee for Afghanistan's secret police becomes an ally in his quest for the truth.Book 2 in the series started out slowly and ended strong. This one started out strong and fizzled toward the end. The first New York section of the book and the Afghanistan section are well developed. However, the final section of the book that ties them together just isn't effective. There were some characters and motives introduced early in the book that I think Smith could have developed to good effect that, for some reason, weren't touched on again. I think he (or his editors) would have been better off cutting those characters and scenes. I thought the ending was too abrupt, particularly since it's also the end of the trilogy. I was surprised to discover that there wasn't any more to it. I don't regret reading books 2 and 3, but I think I would have been equally satisfied if I had stopped with book 1 in the series.
    • 4/5
      Agent 6 is the final volume in Tom Rob Smith’s trilogy about the life and career of Leo Demidov, and he ended it with a very good read, a thriller that paints a vivid picture of the paranoia, lies and propaganda of a Communist Russia emerging from the Stalin years and navigating their way through the cold war years. This book covers a great deal of territory, both in timing and location. The story starts in the early 1960’s and carries us through to the 1980’s. In terms of location we are taken from Russia to America, Afghanistan and back to America as Leo’s life follows it’s complicated course.Leo’s life is imploded by an traumatic event, and he tries to unravel the secrets and discover what really happened, but truth is virtually impossible to find in Soviet Russia, and Leo takes a final step toward total disillusionment toward the state he once served so blindly. Of course during the cold war, the other side was far from perfect and lies and manipulation were the order of the day. Overall I loved the broad strokes of this story, but felt it lacked the moody atmosphere and the heart of the first book in the trilogy, Child 44. Leo goes through so much that by the end of Agent 6 it is hard to view him as a normal man, his feelings and concerns strike one as more a vehicle for the author to hang his interpretation of historical events upon. This book did excel in the action sequences and in particular the Afghanistan setting was fascinating as one could see the groundwork for future terrorism being laid.
    • 2/5
      Rating: 2* of five The Book Description: THREE DECADES.TWO MURDERS.ONE CONSPIRACY.WHO IS AGENT 6?Tom Rob Smith's debut, Child 44, was an immediate publishing sensation and marked the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction. Named one of top 100 thrillers of all time by NPR, it hit bestseller lists around the world, won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In this spellbinding new novel, Tom Rob Smith probes the tenuous border between love and obsession as Leo Demidov struggles to untangle the threads of a devastating conspiracy that shatters everything he holds dear. Deftly capturing the claustrophobic intensity of the Cold War-era Soviet Union, it's at once a heart-pounding thriller and a richly atmospheric novel of extraordinary depth....AGENT 6Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to New York City, he is immediately suspicious.Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy.In the horrible aftermath, Leo demands only one thing: to investigate the killer who destroyed his family. His request is summarily denied. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands. It is a quest that will span decades, and take Leo around the world--from Moscow, to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, to the backstreets of New York--in pursuit of the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6. My Review: Unsuccessful. That's about the size of it. This is an unsuccessful book.There's not a lot of suspense. There are some tense moments, yes, but they're all in the moment. Suspense is built from wanting to know what is coming, how this knot will part, what secrets will we learn.Those expectations weren't well met, and weren't well set up. It's an okay novel, a sort of late-Soviet Doctor Zhivago, but it's not thrilling and I stopped caring about what would happen next after the central murder takes place.The ending is just flat-out terrible and the author and editor should be held up for prolonged public ridicule for having the bad sense and poor sensibilities to foist it on readers who loved Child 44 and liked The Secret Speech.A poor performance on all parts. To be avoided except by completists.
    • 2/5
      “Agent 6” is the third and final book in the Leo Demidov trilogy by Tom Rob Smith. Whereas the first book concentrated on the post-Stalin era and the second book on the Khrushchev era - both books painting a painfully vivid image of life under the oppressively totalitarian Soviet regime - this book is set mostly in the United States and Afghanistan. The two main backdrops to the story are American communism (and Cold War propaganda), and the botched Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.Leo Demidov’s wife Raisa and two adopted daughters are sent to the US for a “peace” concert at the United Nations. A KGB propaganda plot involving his youngest daughter goes wrong, and Raisa is killed. For years Leo is lost in pain. He ends up in Afghanistan as an advisor to the government, witnessing the horrors of the war and finding restless solace in the arms of opium. But he has a mission: to find out who killed his wife. Aided by a local Afghani woman working for the local secret police, Leo eventually tracks down the FBI agent (“Agent 6”) who was involved in Raisa’s death and extracts the real story from him.The story is good and the ending has a surprising twist to it. Smith’s writing is its usual brisk and descriptive self. Yet I found this book less gripping that the first two. Maybe it is due to the fact that the backdrop of daily life in the Soviet Union was more interesting to me than American communism or the war in Afghanistan. Or maybe I just shouldn’t have read all three books in a row, causing a slight “Leo Demidov overdose” effect. But that’s the extent of my “bad” criticism of this trilogy. All in all, it is a superb series well worth reading.
    • 5/5
      Another action-packed page-turner from Tom Rob Smith - in the true image of its forerunners ("Child 44" and "Secret Speech"), continuing to feature the controversial protagonist Leo Demidov (from KGB officer to ex-KGB) spanning 3 turbulent decades of his life, quite an eye-opener about Soviet involvement in Afghanistan being one of the periods. Though this novel stands on its own, I do recommend reading the previous two first.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this a lot. Well written, and not typical. It would have been easy for Smith to make this book a straight escape from Russia and hunt through the US for the killer, but there was a lot more story to tell than that. Nice job.
    • 4/5
      Another absolutely fascinating book by Smith. I love Leo's character for being so multi-faceted from tough KGB agent to a man destroyed by the love for his family. This book is almost 2 completely different stories that finally get brought back together at the end. The pictures of the history and places painted in these books are the icing on an already delicious cake of supreme story-telling. I am worried that this will be the last in the series which is truly a loss. I highly recommend Smith's books to everyone.
    • 4/5
      The final book in Tom Rob Smith's Leo Demidov trilology falls a bit short when compared to 'Child 44' and 'The Secret Speech'. The first two books grab a hold of your attention right from the start and they keep you engaged until the very end. I can't say the same holds true for 'Agent 6'. While I found the beginning and end of the book to be just as griping as 'Child 44' and 'The Secret Speech' the middle of the book, for me, just exists. I often found myself waiting for the book to pick back up, for the sensation to have to keep reading and turning the page to resume, and they did, just many more pages than I would have liked. Overall I enjoyed the book and thought the trilology as a whole was excellent.
    • 4/5
      If you’ve already read CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith, then his latest, AGENT 6, may disappointment you. AGENT is a good book. But CHILD is extraordinary, and you may not think AGENT measures up. You may not think it grabs you right away the way CHILD did. Leo Demidov was a secret police agent in the Soviet Union in CHILD. By the time we get to AGENT, he is former and lives with his wife and daughters in a slum. It is the 1960s, he is no longer trusted, and he is not allowed to leave the country. So I had a problem with the government’s choice of his wife to accompany students visiting the United States. And when she insists on bringing their two daughters, the government agrees. This didn’t make sense to me. But I went along with it.Now Leo’s family is in New York without him. They’re unexciting. One of the daughters is up to something, Leo’s wife calls him for advice, and she doesn’t follow it.It is here in New York that Smith seems to equate the United States with the Soviet Union. The FBI is “the Secret Police” and is just as bad as the KGB. True, Hoover was big on anti-Communism at that time, and he was accused of using the FBI to harass political dissenters. He’s even accused of arranging murders. But it’s still a stretch to imply that the FBI was as bad as the KGB.So I wasn’t too excited about AGENT’s first half. But the second half is great.It’s many years later, and Leo is sentenced to life in Afghanistan before and during the Russian occupation. For many years he trains the secret police there, never forgetting that he needs to solve a mystery in the United States. And, would you believe, with the aid of the mujahedeen, he really does get there, New York even. Smith is sketchy about Leo’s life in the U.S. except that he’s consumed with investigating the mystery that has been eating at him since his wife and children were there. The end is final, which is fitting for the last book in a trilogy.
    • 2/5
      Big disappointment. Tom did not do his research about the USA and made the FBI in the image of the KGB! Very hard read.
    • 5/5
      Here’s the good news; Agent 6, Tom Rob Smith’s final installment in the Leo Demidov trilogy, is just as breathtakingly good as Child 44. This is a beautifully written book, with a plot almost too complex to summarize. His spare, bleak prose, his masterful descriptions of place, love, grief and betrayal, his sympathy for the powerless of this world, his grasp of the way the past returns to influence the present, easily catapult him to the strata of writers like Graham Greene and John leCarre.Young Leo Demidov, a rising star of the Russian secret police, is being tutored on the intricacies of reading a confiscated diary. Read in just the right tone of voice, twenty two words are twisted from an innocuous sentence praising Stalin to a sarcastic barb meriting the writer's arrest. Welcome back to the USSR. Agent 6 begins in the past, with the events that brought Leo and his beloved Raisa together. Seeing her on a subway platform, he falls instantly, irrevocably in love. When he picks up the courage to introduce himself, she snubs him. At the same time, Jesse Austin, a famous black American singer, is visiting Moscow, and Leo is assigned to ensure that he only sees what the Party wants him to see. Simultaneously, he is inadvertently responsible for the arrest and death of his trainee's new girlfriend at the hands of the KGB. The prologue culminates in a concert given by the Communist singer, tying together the threads of the tragedy to come. The story leaps forth in time to 1965. Raisa is alone in New York with their daughters, Zoya and Elena, leading a joint Soviet/American concert for peace. Secretly using Elena as a go between, the American Communist Party requests that Jesse Austin, who has been ruined by his association with Communism, attend a demonstration outside the UN. Catastrophe strikes, altering the course of Leo’s life. Fast forward to 1980. Leo is an adviser in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, living in an opium-colored trance that shields him from his feelings. His new trainee is a pretty young Afghan girl, as blindly enthusiastic about the brave new world that the Soviet state has to offer as he once was. The progression couldn't be more clear. The people of the Soviet Union were enslaved by corrupt leaders, American blacks were first slaves, then enslaved behind prejudice. Women, all over the world, are still slaves. I can’t tell you any more. Agent 6 has compelling, believable characters and a heartbreaking juggernaut of a plot. Tom Rob Smith has enough compassion for everyone, for heroes and villains, for perpetrators as well as victims. You will not be able to put this down.
    • 5/5
      The 3rd and presumably concluding part of the story of Leo Demidov and his family. The story is spread over 16 years and 3 countries - Russia, America and Afganistan. For anybody that has read the first two books, this should complete an exciting story set against the Cold war and the invasion of Afganistan by the Soviets. I enjoyed this book more than the 2nd book (The Secret Speech) and felt more engaged with the central character, Leo.Whilst this book could be read on it's own, it is far better to read the two prequals first to fully understand the main protagenists and back story.