The Kremlin Candidate Review. Jason Matthews. Penguin 2018
Reviewed by Simon Cole
There is a powerful argument that ex-spies write the best espionage novels. There have been more British examples : Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming, Ted Allebeury, and the greatest of them all, John Le Carré.
American writers with a background in the Central Intelligence Agency emerged much later, and are fewer in number. Charles McCarry, who wrote the Paul Christopher novels from the ‘70s blazed a trail, then Jason Matthews followed. More recently we have had excellent novels from David McCloskey and I.S. Berry, the latter of whom competes with Matthews for the best debut novel in the genre since the turn of this century.
Jason Matthews studied Journalism at University, was recruited for his language skills: he was bilingual from childhood having conversed in Greek at home, and spoke at least six languages fluently by the end of his long career as an Operations Officer. He served all over the world, and took up his pen after retiring as Head of Station in Los Angeles.
The Kremlin Candidate is the third of his trilogy of Red Sparrow novels, popularised by the film starring Jennifer Lawrence. Sadly he became unwell with a neurodegenerative condition and died three years after publishing this novel. His trilogy is all he published and is a fine literary legacy.
The trilogy is packed with operational detail, and a review on the CIA website quipped that officers would “wonder how he got all this past the publications review board.” It is reported elsewhere that not all of it did: a plot line in the second novel, which mainly concerned the Iranian Missiles Programme, apparently did not.
The main protagonist of the novels is Dominika Egorova, the eponymous Red Sparrow. After ending her career as a ballerina due to injury, before it really started, she is recruited to the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR). She is sent to Sparrow School, which she bitterly resents, and is trained as a “honey trap” agent, and subsequently becomes an Operations Officer. She is recruited as a double agent by her CIA handler and lover Nate Nash. The action across the trilogy revolves around their relationship and interaction with their superiors.
In the third of the trilogy, The Kremlin Candidate is a Russian asset, whose recruitment Dominika was involved with years before who is in contention to become the Director of the CIA. The action ranges from Moscow to Washington to Hong Kong, taking in Putin’s Black Sea dacha and Greece. Each chapter is rounded off with a recipe, which I enjoyed. This may not be to every reader’s taste (pun intended, unapologetically). There are, in all three books, the most graphic sex scenes, which may also repel some readers. The narrative is dynamic and plot sophisticated, and in particular the characters drawn are highly plausible.
Red Sparrow received great praise , and it is unfair perhaps to compare the third of the trilogy with it, as it is not in the same class. It does not contain as much brilliant description of tradecraft or examine the motives of it’s main protagonists to the same degree. As with the first two novels the plot is laced with realistic geopolitical insight. The portrayal of Putin is chilling, especially in the light of subsequent history: this was written long before the invasion of mainland Ukraine. Where the novel falls down is in it’s ending, which was the inevitable one probably, but not the grande finale I had hoped for.
In conclusion, while not hitting the high notes of Red Sparrow, this is a very good neverthless, and one I would highly recommended to Spybrary aficionados.
Jason Matthews Obituary
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