White Fox

October 1, 2022

Newly in charge of a Soviet penal colony, a post typically reserved for disgraced agents, Lt. Col. Alexander Vasin flees during a bloody revolt in the company of an enigmatic prisoner claiming he knows who ordered John F. Kennedy's assassination. Wrapping up the "Alexander Vasin" trilogy, begun with Black Sun (long-listed for the John Creasey, i.e., "New Blood," Dagger Award) and Red Traitor (a Financial Times Best Thriller of 2021).

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January 2, 2023
Rogue KGB agents plot to assassinate JFK in the confusing third and final volume of Matthews’s Black Sun trilogy (after 2021’s Red Traitor). In September of 1963, Andrei Fyodorov, the former KGB station chief in Miami who recruited Lee Harvey Oswald for the hit, realizes that “the plan was insane” and decides he doesn’t want to go through with it. His efforts to stop it fail. When Kennedy is assassinated, Fyodorov, who fears certain people want to kill him because he knows all the details of the plot, is sent to a Siberian penal colony under an assumed name by the KGB’s General Orlov, who knows Fyodorov can implicate him in the assassination plot. The commandant of the camp, Lt. Col. Alexander Vasin, decides to help Fyodorov in retaliation against his rival, Orlov. Exciting chase scenes across Russia, including through the brutal, unforgiving Siberian countryside, compensate only in part for the surfeit of exposition on the KGB’s internal politics and the lack of characterization. Matthews, who was once a Newsweek bureau chief in Moscow, has a deep, wide-ranging knowledge of the Soviet Union and the era, but his overly dogged attention to detail doesn’t generate a lot of thrills. Even JFK assassination conspiracy buffs will be disappointed. Agent: Toby Mundy, Toby Mundy Assoc.

January 1, 2023
Alexander Vasin returns for the last installment of the trilogy that began with Black Sun (2019). Having stepped on some powerful toes in his previous adventure (Red Traitor, 2021), Vasin has been assigned the command of a vestigial prison camp in the deep reaches of Siberia, where, insufficiently brutal by nature, he coexists uneasily with his more effective second-in-command. Then his KGB boss, Gen. Orlov, saddles him with Andrei Fyodorov, a special-status prisoner to be kept secret and alive at any cost. When a gang of Chechen prisoners riots and takes over most of the camp, Vasin, Fyodorov, and a small group manage a tricky escape during which Vasin learns what is special about his prisoner. Fyodorov claims to have been ordered to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and to have documentation proving it. Though he refused, feeling Oswald was too unstable, the assassination took place. The documentation is of interest to many people: Fyodorov wants to leverage an escape from the Soviet Union, a KGB faction wants to suppress it and kill Fyodorov, and Vasin sees in it an opportunity to get back to Moscow and possibly topple Orlov. After the escape from the Chechens, Vasin and Fyodorov conduct a cross-country hide-and-seek dance--Fyodorov keeps escaping and Vasin tracks him down, but because Vasin needs his cooperation, Fyodorov is never clapped in irons or just shot. While the previous volumes of the trilogy are rooted in historical fact, there is no history underpinning this story, and perhaps because it does not have a predetermined endpoint, the whole enterprise feels a little formless. Matthews is reliable in matters of setting and details of Soviet life, but the narration lacks focused energy. A slightly shaggy conclusion to a generally worthwhile enterprise.

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Starred review from March 1, 2023
This concluding volume in Matthews' trilogy (following Black Sun, 2019, and Red Traitor, 2021) continues the saga of KGB officer Alexander Vasin, whose willingness to buck the orders of his superiors, especially the Machiavellian General Orlov, has landed him in the ultimate career burial ground--commander of a Siberian prison. Vasin knows just enough about the underside of some history-making events to keep him out of an actual graveyard, but only just. This time could change that. Andrei Fyodorow is a ""special status prisoner,"" and Orlov has charged Vasin with making sure he is kept safe. But why? Vasin eventually determines that Fyodorow, a former KGB officer, was assigned to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK. Now, in the wake of the assassination, everyone who knew of the scheme wants to distance themselves from it, but Fyodorow claims to have incriminating papers. With Fyodorow's help, Vasin attempts to play a long game designed to topple Orlov and make possible his own return to power, but there are many obstacles in the way, including a prison riot and a long march across the frozen tundra. The purely fictional premise is more of a MacGuffin than a galvanizing centerpiece, but the adventure elements of the story, especially the riot and the Siberia trek, are riveting, sort of Brute Force meets The Perfect Storm. A surprising but oddly fitting finale to the saga of a reluctant rebel.

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