« Royal Panoply - Carolly Erickson | Main | Caddyshack DVD »
March 20, 2008
The Charm School - Nelson Demille
The Charm School by Nelson DeMille is an excellent, intense, delightful spy novel. Set in the early '80s, a young American takes a trip across Europe. Feeling adventurous, he ventures into the Soviet Union in his Pontiac Trans-Am, but gets lost in the woods outside of Borodino. What he finds there sets off an international incident with the capability to plunge the two superpowers back into the throes of the cold war.
DeMille masterfully employs the colorful characters of Air Force attache Sam Hollis, foreign service worker Lisa Rhodes, and CIA station chief Seth Alevy to spin a tale so intense that you will literally have to put the book down at points.
Running around 700 pages, DeMille does not let the plot get bogged down in excessive character development. Rather, the book focuses on a core of about seven characters who are explored in some depth, but the plot is pre-eminent. Teaming up, Hollis and Rhodes take several investigative trips into the Russian countryside and Moscow proper.
There are dozens of points in the book that are funny, such as the drunken Alevy and Hollis yelling into the Moscow night at their KGB counterparts, but it is otherwise very intense.
Left out of this review are explanations of the characters Major Jack Dodson, KGB Colonel Burov, and a great many other details that would spoil points of intrigue. I highly recommend this book to my more mature readers (there's some sex).
Like most DeMille books, this one contains adult content. Torben Reviews rating: 5 of 5 stars.