The Barnes & Noble Review In the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, high-ranking State Department official Walter Kotlar is accused of treason by an ambitious congressman. When a witness scheduled to testify against him is murdered, Kotlar flees the country and is branded a Communist spy, leaving behind his wife and young son Nick, with no explanation beyond the news coverage of his defection. The mystery of his father's betrayal haunts Nick throughout his life. Twenty years later he is a disaffected Vietnam veteran, in England during the Paris peace negotiations to meet with his adopted father — his real father's old boss and an American representative in the negotiations. It's there that after two decades without contact he is approached by a mysterious woman with a message from his father, presumed dead all this time. Nick accompanies the woman to Prague, where his father is, in fact, dying and desperate to see his son. But he wants something more from Nick as well: help to return home and to bring to light the sinister truth behind his disappearance. In Prague Nick becomes embroiled in a clandestine world where long-buried secrets are hunted and nothing is quite as it seems. Agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain lurk at each treacherous turn, and confusion weighs heavily on every move Nick makes both before and after he takes up his father's cause. Kanon has a natural gift for storytelling, and if clichés come easily in describing A Prodigal Spy, it's only because it has the distinctive feel of a classic spy novel. Kanon treats the realities of the cold warasanything but black and white, and he cleverly creates an atmosphere of menacing uncertainty that pervades every fiber of his exquisitely executed story. You know that surprises are in store, but the revelations succeed in shocking nonetheless. The Prodigal Spy is that rare novel that