1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Real Deal, 24 Oct 2005
By A Customer
This review is from: Song for Katya (Paperback)
Kevin Stevens is the M. Night Shyamalan of the written word. He takes genres whose situations and stock characters are too well known and asks, "what would that be like if it happened in real life?"
Rather than re-examine ghosts (The Sixth Sense), superheroes (Unbreakable) or aliens (Signs), though, Stevens has chosen police corruption (2003's The Rizzoli Contract) and now the Cold War. Song for Katya is set in Moscow, January 1981. Stevens writes with authority, and nails the time and atmosphere to a T. While his novel includes characters who work for the CIA or the KGB, the focus is not on spies but on a musician. Jazzman Drew Fisher is not even the band's leader. He plays the piano like his idol Bill Evans. And like most men Drew is too wrapped in his own concerns and haunted by his past to be concerned with politics.
When Drew meets Katya Timoshenko, one of the facilitators from the cultural exchange, the attraction is immediate. Mutual understanding soon blossoms into love, then explodes into illicit passion. But how can two people be left free to form their own alliance in this atmosphere? A thaw in the icy status quo would prove highly embarrassing for those in high power.
Readers who are expecting top-secret spy action or James Bond gadgets are best off pulling a musty Cold War era paperback off the shelf. Song for Katya presents the reality of what life was like under the Soviet system, and explores what two real people can do when confined in such situations.
Four stars.
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