Black Wolf by Kathleen Kent

 

Weird to read a novel set in 1990, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union (well, sort of--the novel conveys a reality in which the collapse was a slow-motion thing, still ongoing in 1990, which comports with my memories, if not the common understanding/memory) that has spy stuff at its core, even if the novel is really at heart more about the serial killer in it, and all the misdirection around him. The prose is really more stolid than anything else, but it's functional, and the story is mostly plausible: serial killers in the US have thrived because they could move around; serial killer thrived in the USSR because the government refused to acknowledge that they could exist. The main character is interestingly quirky, but I'm not sure there's enough to her to sustain the length of this novel. Not horrible, not great.