Show Me a Hero

Ted Allbeury (1917–2005) was an intelligence officer with Great Britain's Special Operations Executive during World War II; afterward, he ran agents between East and West Germany. Allbeury's firsthand Cold War experiences enliven his espionage novels, and he was praised by the New York Times Book Review as "a most knowledgeable chronicler of espionage " and by Booklist as "a master of the genre." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Allbeury's latest espionage thriller is a well-written and suspenseful tale based on the real-life story of a man who successfully spied for the Soviet Union for 40 years while living quietly in New York as a bookseller. Andrei Aarons has a dream of peace for all humankind, of "trying to create a world where everybody gets a fair deal." He is a reluctant spy. He is also a double agent, advising U.S. presidents on Moscow's policies and politics in order to help preserve "peace" during the Cold War years. It is through his exposure to both governments that Aarons becomes painfully aware of the treachery and deceit in Moscow and the inconsistencies of U.S. democracy. Using his vast store of knowledge, he buys his freedom. With his wife, Tania, he flees his double life to live in Israel, where he finally finds a peace within himself. Allbeury ( A Time Without Shadows , LJ 1/91) depicts well-developed characters. Highly recommended for public libraries. - Stacie Browne Chandler, Plym outh P.L., Mass. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly Ostensibly based on fact, this disappointing story traces the Russian-born Jew, Andrei Aarons, through his nearly four decades gathering intelligence for both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Originally a Soviet agent in Paris in 1930, Aarons is encouraged by his Soviet handler to move to the States in 1938, where he sets up an espionage network from his New York City book store. Increasingly disaffected with the Communist Party and increasingly concerned about the possibility of war between the two superpowers, Aarons meets secretly with Truman, Eisenhower and JFK, serving as their window on to the Kremlin. After a warning from a Soviet friend in Moscow in the mid-1960s, he folds his network and leaves for Israel, coming out after 30 years of retirement for a farewell briefing with Bush on the breakup of the Communist system. Veteran author ( A Time Without Mirrors ) and WW II British Intelligence agent Allbeury has written a surprisingly lackluster book. The details of Aarons's spying is sketchy; the backdrops (except for the brief stint in wartime France) are flat; and the characters, led by the lugubrious protagonist, are uniformly cardboard. Allbeury's New York geography is off (e.g., confusing the old and new Madison Square Gardens), historical details are often wrong (Truman was never in Ike's White House) and the Yanks talk funny ("I shan't ask you"). Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Booklist A fictionalized biography of a Soviet "illegal" spy in New York, this probably winds up Allbeury's long career as author of cold war spook stories. Undercover as a dowdy bookseller, Andrei Aarons services various low-level operations, and one day in the late 1940s runs into his friend Serov who defected to the CIA. Proposition: keep both the Kremlin and the White House au courant on each other's thinking. Aarons consents, having established audiences in both places over the course of decades. Alas, Moscow begins to suspect he's gone native living in America, and recalls him, but Aarons defeats these threatened "direct measures" by retiring to Israel. The purposeful lack of furtiveness here undermines casual interest, but Allbeury's track record--this is his thirty-fourth yarn--may attract the dedicated espionage enthusiast. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Kirkus Reviews Prolific thriller specialist Allbeury (A Time Without Shadows, 1991, etc.) backtracks in a rather nostalgic bit of historic fiction about a loyal communist who spent his life in the US spying for a glorious USSR that never existed. ``Based on truth'' and covering a cold war that has ended, leaving no doubt about the outcome, this is more memoir than thriller. Motherless little Andrei Aarons follows his father, a Jewish glove-maker and loyal communist, into Parisian exile in the last days of the Romanovs. Spotted as a comer by the Bolsheviks on their way to power, Andrei gets sent to spy school and a lifetime assignment as the Soviet man on the scene in New York, where, with his loyal communist French wife, he sets up as a bookdealer and political spy. Although he's expected to run the usual nuts-and- bolts espionage and crack the whip over the American communist cells, his specialty is soon seen to be his ability to read the Americans and interpret them for the leaders in Moscow. Admiring the optimistic Americans among whom he lives but steeped from infancy in the purest Communist theory, the keenly analytical Aarons is uniquely able to understand and predict US opinion on and reaction to anything the Muscovites might come up with, including the treaty with Nazi Germany. When WW II ends and Stalin's expansionist madness increases, Aarons, who has never lost the communist vision, becomes concerned for world peace and--thanks to the machinations of a Wall Street lawyer and a Franco-Russian CIA employee--steps into a role as personal interpreter of the Russians for Truman and then, years later, for Kennedy. He seems to have been largely and frequently responsible for the avoidance of WW III. Allbeury, a Briton, never gets American speech nailed down, but his heart's in the right place. This is gentle reading for pensioned cold war soldiers. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more