4.5 stars deserving of the round up.
If I didn't know better I would think that JC Newhouse had a 🔮 crystal ball. Everyone not living under a rock knows that Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year but you may not remember that Putin previously invaded Ukraine in February of 2014 which resulted in the forceful acquisition of the Crimean Peninsula. This is the period where the story takes place.
Let me summarize the well written blurb. Fishing with Tolstoy is a timely and heartwarming story of the friendship between a Russian spy and an American diplomat that pokes tongue-in-cheek fun at the spy game while airing Russia's brutal aspiration to recover its lost empire.
A sample: "Tolstoy was a rockstar with the KGB and later the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. He had a mean streak that would make a Moscow loan shark blanch when crossed...
My history with him went all the way back to the old Soviet days, and though our careers and ideologies pitted us on opposite sides of the diplomatic table, I've never had a truer friend."
So why did I like it? It's well-crafted, the dialogue is perfect, it's interesting and entertaining, and it couldn't be more timely. I will definitely be reading more JC Woodhouse.