The Prodigal Spy

A Novel

A Novel

A Novel

By Joseph Kanon

By Joseph Kanon

By Joseph Kanon
Read by Boyd Gaines

Best Seller
The Prodigal Spy by Joseph Kanon
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Paperback $17.00

Sep 04, 2018 | 512 Pages

Ebook $10.99

Sep 29, 2010 | 544 Pages

Audiobook Download $14.98

Jul 05, 2000 | 371 Minutes

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      Jul 05, 2000 | 371 Minutes

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    About The Prodigal Spy

    In a time of accusations, treachery and lies, some secrets were heartbreaking….

    Others were deadly.

    Once, Nick Kotlar tried to save his father. From the angry questions. From the accusations. From a piece of evidence that only Nick knew about and that he destroyed—for his father. But in the Red Scare of 1950 Walter Kotlar could not be saved. Branded a spy, he fled the country, leaving behind a wife, a young son—and a key witness lying dead below her D.C. hotel room.

    Now, twenty years later, Nick will get a second chance. Because a beautiful journalist has brought a message from his long-lost father, and Nick will follow her into Soviet-occupied Prague for a painful reunion. Confronting a father he barely remembers and a secret that could change everything, Nick knows he must return to the place where it all began: to unravel a lie, to penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and to expose the one person who knew the truth—and watched a family be destroyed.

    About The Prodigal Spy

    In a time of accusations, treachery and lies, some secrets were heartbreaking….

    Others were deadly.

    Once, Nick Kotlar tried to save his father. From the angry questions. From the accusations. From a piece of evidence that only Nick knew about and that he destroyed—for his father. But in the Red Scare of 1950 Walter Kotlar could not be saved. Branded a spy, he fled the country, leaving behind a wife, a young son—and a key witness lying dead below her D.C. hotel room.

    Now, twenty years later, Nick will get a second chance. Because a beautiful journalist has brought a message from his long-lost father, and Nick will follow her into Soviet-occupied Prague for a painful reunion. Confronting a father he barely remembers and a secret that could change everything, Nick knows he must return to the place where it all began: to unravel a lie, to penetrate a deadly conspiracy, and to expose the one person who knew the truth—and watched a family be destroyed.

    About The Prodigal Spy

    What if the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s had actually uncovered a spy? The bestselling author of Los Alamos returns with a thrilling new novel of suspense, romance, and intrigue.  

    Washington, 1950.  The trouble with history, Nick Kotlar’s father tells him, is that you have to live through it before you know how it’ll come out.  And for Walter Kotlar, a high-level State Department official, the stakes couldn’t be higher: an ambitious congressman has accused him of treason.  As Nick watches helplessly, his family’s privileged world is turned upside down in a frenzy of klieg lights and banging gavels.

    Then one snowy night the chief witness against his father plunges to her death and his father flees, leaving only an endless mystery and the stain of his defection.  It would be better, Nick is told, to think of him as dead.

    But twenty years later Walter Kotlar is still alive, and he enlists Molly, a young journalist, to bring Nick a disturbing message.  He badly wants to see his son; after two decades of silence and isolation, he is desperate to end his own Cold War.  Resentful but intrigued, Nick agrees to accompany Molly to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia for the painful reunion.  

    Once in Prague, Nick finds a clandestine world where nothing is what it seems–not the beautiful city, shadowy with menace; not the woman with whom he falls in love; and most of all not the man he thinks he no longer knows, yet still knows better than anyone.  For Walter Kotlar has an impossible request: he wants to come home and he wants Nick to help.  He also has a valuable secret about what really happened the night he walked out of Nick’s life–and about the deadly conspiracy that still threatens them.

    The Prodigal Spy is a story of fathers and sons and the loyalties that transcend borders, and of a young man’s search for the truth buried in his own past, when a national drama was made personal and history itself became a crime story.  Like Los Alamos, this is at once an ingenious mystery, a love story, and a masterly recreation of an era whose legacy haunts our own.

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    Praise

    “An edgy spy thriller . . . [and] a tale of love—between father and son, man and woman—set against a foreboding background that is poignant and imminently believable. . . . Captivating.”—Denver Post

    “Compelling . . . intriguing . . . superb . . . reads beautifully and convinces utterly.”—Wall Street Journal

    “Intriguing…Kanon wonderfully conveys the paranoia of the times. . . . The Prodigal Spy has a richness of emotional layers usually not found in espionage novels.” —USA Today

    “Vivid . . . tense . . . reheats the Cold War with history, mystery and a political blast from the past.”—People

    “Kanon does a fine job . . . blending history, fiction, suspense and romance . . . but what he does the best is to turn more than a few moments in our history into a personal story that shows the reality of what we have done and can do to each other.”—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

    About Joseph Kanon

    Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling author of eight novels, which have been published in twenty-four languages, including: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, The Good German, which was made into a film starring George… More about Joseph Kanon

    About Joseph Kanon

    Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling author of eight novels, which have been published in twenty-four languages, including: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, The Good German, which was made into a film starring George… More about Joseph Kanon

    About Joseph Kanon

    Joseph Kanon is the internationally bestselling author of eight novels, which have been published in twenty-four languages, including: Los Alamos, which won the Edgar Award for best first novel, The Good German, which was made into a film starring George… More about Joseph Kanon

    Product Details

    Paperback
    Published by Bantam
    Sep 04, 2018 | 512 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780525621591

    Ebook
    Published by Bantam
    Sep 29, 2010 | 544 Pages | ISBN 9780307765406

    Audiobook Download
    Published by Random House Audio
    Jul 05, 2000 | 371 Minutes | ISBN 9780553751185

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