Marvelous post-Cold War spy thriller about Finn, an Iraq 1 veteran whose hot air balloon lands in an Indian reservation and Parsifal, a long-dormant Soviet assassin revived for a new series of wetwork operations. Someone is shaking down the Indian's casino and anyone who tries to do anything about it meets with an accident. Finn looks into the shakedown and Parsifal receives instructions to off him. But why is a Soviet agent doing hits for what appears to be a Mafia operation?

Littell has been called the American LeCarre, and it's a well-earned title. His espionage novels are clever, nasty, full of twists, betrayals, bitter ironies and terrible human costs. The end of the Cold War doesn't faze him in the slightest. The intelligence game endures, deadly and terrible and self-sustaining. This is a tight, sharp, tense thriller as Finn and Parsifal work their way back up the chain of command to get to the truth. Riveting.