"A watchtower's searchlight played across no man's land, slowly sweeping the razor-wire-topped, chain-link fence along the road." It may be the most familiar trope in Cold War spy fiction--the Iron Curtain crossing--but somehow it never quite loses its frisson. Here, in a novel set in 1985, aging CIA spymaster George Mueller (An Honorable Man, 2016, and The Good Assassin, 2017) is attempting to do something never done before: exfiltrate a senior Soviet intelligence officer from Moscow. The officer, code-named GAMBIT, will not cooperate unless a freelance agent, Alex Garin, handles the job. Mueller doesn't like it: Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the West, may or may not be trustworthy. And he almost certainly has his own scores to settle in Moscow. Evoking without imitating classic le Carré, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the Smiley novels, Vidich supplements the world-weariness we expect from cold warriors in the game too long by giving Garin a satisfyingly contrarian "contempt for Agency puppetteers moving his arms and legs in a . . . production of espionage commedia dell'arte."

Set in the mid-1980s, Vidich's intriguing if flawed fourth CIA novel opens in Moscow, where CIA agent George Mueller, last seen in 2017's The Good Assassin, is attempting to make a brush pass in Red Square with a senior KGB officer, code named Gambit, who wants to defect. Mueller spots Gambit, but before they can exchange identical cloth bags (Mueller's contains "another man's dinner," Gambit's "camera, film, radio, and rubles"), a Russian militiaman stops Mueller, and he ends up arrested by the KGB. In the aftermath of this failure, Gambit requests a different handler: Alexander Garin, a former CIA officer and the mercenary of the title. Born in the Soviet Union, Garin is an enigma; no one knows where his true loyalties lie. Vidich writes knowledgeably about the politics of the period, notably the impending changes to the U.S.S.R. with the rise of Gorbachev, and the spycraft rings true, but an enormous cast and labyrinthine plotting bog down the book. Still, fans of Cold War--era spy fiction will be rewarded. Agent: Will Roberts, Gernert Co. (Feb.)

A retired CIA agent returns to arrange a KGB agent's defection from Moscow in 1985. When Moscow CIA station chief George Mueller's cover is blown, top-secret asset GAMBIT requests a specific new case officer, and the CIA pulls Aleksander Garin out of retirement and sends him off to Moscow. As an active CIA agent, Garin attempted to exfiltrate a senior Soviet military defector in an operation that went seriously wrong, and this previous failure colors his presence there now. But Garin believes his presence in Moscow will go unnoticed by the KGB, and in his cover as a human rights investigator, he cultivates a few Muscovite contacts, including an urbane KGB official, while prepping GAMBIT for his defection. GAMBIT, meanwhile, has come to the attention of the leader of a separate KGB directorate. The old regime is faltering, and the KGB leaders are jockeying for advantage; Garin perceives an opportunity to create suspicion within the KGB, deflecting attention from the hunt for GAMBIT. A love interest develops, connected to Garin's past, which itself holds some surprises, and there is a degree of suspense in Garin's machinations; firearms are duly identified and celebrated; Moscow locations are convincingly described. But the many moving parts never quite mesh, Garin's situation never quite becomes compelling, and at times Garin himself seems, for all his skills and experience, a little fuzzy. Deft action and a solid historical setting but sometimes indistinct. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.