Robert S. Levinson, The Traitor in Us All

The Traitor in Us All

Robert S. Levinson

Five Star, Feb 2010, $25.95

ISBN 9781594148521

In Eden Highlands, California, killer Emil Grass murders one teen in a pizza shop and abducts the victim's friend Tracy Collins. The assumption is she is a hostage. However, reporter Jack Sothern disagrees.

Instead he seeks a link between Grass and the extended Collins' family. He soon finds what he sought with Tracy's mother, Maggie. Sothern believes Maggie has seen, and perhaps possesses, the lost missing diary of the late Erich Mielke, the notorious deadly East German Ministry of State Security chief. Maggie had been married to Dan "The Turncoat rebel" Boone, who defected to the USSR but tried to return to the West before the Wall came down; only to be assassinated. Now the past transgressions of the adults have converged on the rightfully frightened teenage child.

The Traitor in Us All is an exhilarating action-packed thriller that has deep ugly ties back to the Cold War. The story line is fast-paced from the opening kidnapping to the final confrontation, but ignore your plausibility meter as the plot is over the top of the Kremlin (perhaps the Burj Dubai would be more accurate).

Harriet Klausner