For half a century, the case of Isaiah Oggins, a 1920s New York intellectual brutally murdered in 1947 on Stalin's orders, remained hidden in the secret files of the KGB and the FBI - a footnote buried in the rubble of the Cold War. Then, in 1992, it surfaced briefly, when Boris Yeltsin handed over a deeply censored dossier to the White House. 'The Lost Spy' at last reveals the truth: Oggins was one of the first Americans to spy for the Soviets.
Based on six years of international sleuthing, 'The Lost Spy' traces Oggins's rise in beguiling detail - a brilliant Columbia University graduate sent to run a safe house in Berlin and spy on the Romanovs in Paris and the Japanese in Manchuria - and his fall: death by poisoning in a KGB laboratory. As harrowing as 'Darkness at Noon' and as tragic as 'Dr Zhivago', 'The Lost Spy' is one of the great non-fiction detective stories of our time.
Andrew Meier, a former Moscow correspondent for Time magazine, is the author of 'Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall', which was named a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and Publishers Weekly. He lives in New York.
This is a remarkable book, painstakingly researched.
LITERARY REVIEW - Nikolai Tolstoy
As a piece of historical detective work, Meier's book is a triumph... a fine acheivement: not only a spy story worthy of John le Carr?, but a grim reminder of the brutal reality of Stalin's secret world.
DAILY TELEGRAPH - Dominic Sandbrook
meticulously researched, exquisitely paced and genuinely thrilling
SUNDAY HERALD (GLASGOW) - Alan Taylor
richly informative
EVENING STANDARD
'a stunning example of historical detection and an illuminating biography of a lost soul.'
DAILY EXPRESS
a fascinating story
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
the book is amazing, if simply as a piece of phenomenally dedicated detective work... there's forgotten history here, a history we shouldn't forget.
THE TABLET
Quite simply it is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read... This is a book magnificent in its historical political and geographical sweep... it is impeccably researched and beautifully written... Read it and weep if you will - but read it, please.
TRIBUNE - Stephen Pound