The Spy Who Vanished by Alma Katsu

Published by Amazon Original Stories on July 18, 2024

The Spy Who Vanished is the name given to its three parts collectively. Each part is available individually from Amazon as part of its Original Stories series. The cover shown above belongs to the first story. Kindle users who don’t belong to Kindle Unlimited must purchase and download all three if they want to have a meaningful reading experience, as none of the three parts stand alone. Together they are a novella (and also a marketing tool for Kindle Unlimited).

Yuri Kozlov is a Russian agent. Putin assigned him to pose as a defector to gain access to the CIA. He’s supposed to report everything he learns to the Kremlin if he manages to worm secrets out of the agents who are subjecting him to a friendly interrogation. Putin is particularly eager to learn the identity of a CIA mole who is suspected of having infiltrated Russian intelligence. If not for the CIA’s track record of indiscretion, it would be difficult to swallow Yuri's almost immediate acquisition of that information,

In addition to gathering intelligence, Yuri is told to find and kill a Russian defector, Maxim Sokolov. Putin wants him eliminated because he knows something embarrassing about Putin that he apparently hasn’t revealed. There is hardly reason to fear that Sokolov will spill the beans after all these years, but Putin is paranoid. It seems unlikely that Yuri can accomplish all these tasks without being killed or captured, but Putin probably thinks that's Yuri's problem to worry about.

Yuri learns that Sokolov died in a car accident but that he married and had a daughter. Yuri’s handler conveys that intelligence, then tells Yuri that Putin wants the wife and daughter eliminated. Yuri comes to learn that Sokolov’s daughter is someone he has met, someone he likes.

Yuri is not nuanced. He doesn't do moral dilemmas. You point him at a target, he destroys it, that's his life. Yet he killed an innocent girl once and has been at least mildly haunted by it. He wonders how he will feel if he kills an innocent girl he knows. I give Alma Katsu credit for giving Yuri even this modest amount of depth.

Setting aside the improbable plot, the story works best as a psychological profile of a Russian agent who (1) feels disrespected by handlers who view him as an uneducated thug with a talent for assassination, and (2) kind of enjoys the benefits of western life, but (3) only feels at home in Russia and worries that he’ll always be looking over his shoulder for a Russian assassin if he actually defects and stays in the US. The story’s mild dramatic tension derives from that dilemma: should be stay (in the US as a defector) or should he go (back to Russia after succeeding or failing in his mission)?

While the story is nicely executed, it lacks substance and credibility. Alma Katsu’s character sketch of Yuri is convincing but the plot is not. Nor is the story sufficiently eventful or surprising to pay a strong reward to a reader who consumes all three parts. Maybe Katsu will eventually expand it into a more satisfying novel, although it’s difficult to see where else the story could go.

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