(pb; 1987)
From the back cover
“In the seething cauldron of Germany between two world wars. . .
“Young Johnny Lenz found his manhood and his cause. Loathing Fascism, growing up in chaos, he became a valued soldier of the Communist revolution. Fiercely loyal to his Moscow leaders, he fought, killed, and bled for them. Until Stalin’s bitter pact with Adolf Hitler brought disenchantment. . . until murder, torture and corruption revealed to him the great Communist lie.
“Rio De Janiero, 1936. . .
“An exotic city celebrating Carnival with extravagance and abandon. . . and a country in the midst of one of the century’s most daring attempts at revolution. Now Johnny Lenz will make his own life a perfect lie, balancing on a razor’s edge between rival agents and two sisters whose urgent passions could betray him. Now he will engineer a violent coup in the name of Communism—as a double agent for British Intelligence.”
Review
Moss’s complex, ambitious political thriller is one of those rare works where the personal and the political come together in an effective, harmonious manner. Johnny Lenz, an anti-Nazi and (relatively) kind-hearted believer in Communism, joins the party and rises quickly in the ranks, only to discover that his political party is riddled with corruption and other vices, vices that not only erode his initial hopes, but affect the love of his life (Sigrid Eckhardt, an artist), threatening to drive them apart—not unlike the way international politics and espionage, and national temperaments are split and exploited. His broken-faith/double-agent journey spans decades and continents, flavored with vivid descriptions of danger, rich characterization, sudden bursts of violence, romance, and locations, without any lags in the pacing and storyline. (Fans of barebones, lean-writing thrillers may disagree, but given Carnival’s scope, this is another excellent work by a master thriller writer, one worth owning, and perhaps in a few years, re-reading.)
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