Union Station

Informationen zum Autor David Downing grew up in suburban London. He is the author of seven other books in the John Russell  station series, set in WWII Berlin, as well as four WWI espionage novels in the Jack McColl series and the thrillers Diary of a Dead Man on Leave and The Red Eagles . He lives with his wife, an American acupuncturist, in rural France. Klappentext "Los Angeles, 1953. It has been five years since British journalist John Russell struck a deal with a high-ranking Soviet official, relieving Russell of his duty as double-agent for Soviet and American intelligence. Now Russell lives a life of relative comfort in Los Angeles alongside his wife, Effi, a star on an American sitcom, and their adopted daughter, Rosa, a young artist on the cusp of adulthood. He has just begun work on a book investigating American firms that did business with Germany during Nazi occupation when he notices someone is tailing him--and his wife--all around Los Angeles. Has someone not taken kindly to his research? Is it a McCarthyist freelancer, trying to dig up dirt on Effi and her family? Or, could it be that in the leadership struggle following Stalin's death, the deal Russell struck all those years ago has put him at risk yet again? When Effi is invited to the Third Annual Berlin Film Festival as a guest of honor, the two make the decision to attend-thrusting them into the political disorder of a city that was once their home and which they now struggle to recognize. It is here that Russell will come face to face with the forces that have followed him, from Hollywood to Berlin and back again"-- Leseprobe Prelude March 10, 1953 “So which magazine are you from?” Stephen Brabason asked. Not, John Russell thought, that the actor really cared. He just wanted to emphasise how many other interviewers were paying court to him that day.     “I work for a couple of newspapers,” Russell told him. “One in England, one in Germany.”      “Oh,” the actor said, sounding almost interested. “Do you speak German?”      “I do. I lived there for a time. Immediately after the war,” he added, because letting on that he’d also been there for most of the inter-war years rarely elicited a positive response. “And I know you have a lot of fans in that country,” he said ingratiatingly.      Brabason let slip the smile which had launched quite a clutch of B movies, and, of late, a smattering of As. Russell was at a loss as to how or why. Having watched the latest, a sub-Hitchcock murder mystery in which Brabason played the second male lead and heroine’s saviour, Russell knew the man was only capable of playing one character, albeit in a stunning variety of costumes. And having now met the man, it was the clear that the character in question was Brabason’s idealised version of himself.      The actor was finishing work on a romantic weepie called Her Decision , which centred on a couple taking in the heroine’s dead sister’s children after she and her husband have both been struck by the same bolt of lightning. Russell, invited to a prerelease screening, had followed Effi’s advice and kept an eye out for the decision in the title, and been suitably impressed by the accuracy of her prediction that he would wait in vain. “So what drew you to Her Decision ?” he asked Brabason. Apart from the money and the fact that his agent had urged him to do so.      The actor thought about his reply, which said something for his professionalism, if not the film.      “Was it the chance to work with Meredith Kissing?” Russell asked. Any on-screen chemistry between the two was notable by its absence, but that, according to Russell’s actress wife, Effi, was because both leads were more interested in partners of their own gender. A common enough Hollywood occurrence, but not one that received much of an airing in the press.      “Well, she’s ...

Product details

• Authors: David Downing
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 06.02.2024
• EAN: 9781641293570
• ISBN: 978-1-64129-357-0
• No. of pages: 408
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 234 mm x 37 mm
• Series: A John Russell WWII Spy Thriller
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense