Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
With the troubling geo-politics of contemporary times, it’s comforting to escape to the past, where Cold-War shenanigans indicate that little has changed, except the colours of the flags we cling to. Lara Prescott’s debut is a literary thriller of extraordinary power and insight. It is one not to be missed.
It is known that political dogma uses the arts to manipulate public opinion. It was the CIA that helped bring George Orwell’s Animal Farm to the screens in 1954. Some call this activity psychological warfare (psyops), while others call it propaganda.
Lara Prescott uses the backdrop to the publication of Boris Pasternak's Dr Zhivago for this fictional tale of cold-war intrigue. She also tells of changing male-female relations and attitudes in the workplace, crafting a timely and evocative thriller. It is prescient in the era of ‘#metoo’ - with strong women at a typing pool, and men playing politics to nudge public opinion. It’s also a little ‘Mad Men’ in terms of style, and its nudges and winks.
Engaging characters Sally Forrester and Irina Drozdov work the typing pool, in a male-dominated CIA (from the former OSS). A smuggled copy of Pasternak’s novel finds its way to the West, where it will be translated, and then re-translated back into Russian for it to affect public opinion, back in the Soviet Bloc.
Apart from the sections in the West, there is drama and interaction in Moscow with Boris Pasternak’s muse-cum-lover Olga Ivinskaya, and the authorities trying to preserve and protect their peoples from Western influence.
The novel zips back and fro from the West to the East, but does so with zest, humour and an eye to past attitudes, sexual as well as political.
A defining debut, one that provokes deep thought when we ponder upon the veracity of what we read, for words can be weaponized as George Orwell predicted, as can sexual attitudes in the workplace.
Today it’s social media in the spotlight, but for some the novel retains its power, like Dr Zhivago and Animal Farm (among others) did during the Cold War; and today Lara Prescott reveals the secrets that were kept.
Brilliantly different, a round of applause for this literary thriller.
