The Useful Idiot
The Useful Idiot book cover

The Useful Idiot

Paperback – January 30, 2020

Price
$15.95
Format
Paperback
Pages
256
Publisher
Silvertail Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1909269347
Dimensions
5.25 x 0.64 x 8 inches
Weight
10.4 ounces

Description

About the Author John Sweeney is an award-winning journalist and a former long-serving BBC reporter. He is the author of eleven books, including three novels: the 200,000-copy bestseller ELEPHANT MOON, another historical thriller based on true event, two modern-day political thrillers, COLD and ROAD, an investigation into the Church of Scientology, THE CHURCH OF FEAR, an account of his time spent undercover in North Korea, NORTH KOREA UNDERCOVER. He tweets from @johnsweeneyroar.

Features & Highlights

  • 'A cracking read… deserves high sales and equal praise’
  • Financial Times
  • 'An insightful, frighteningly intelligent thriller... a gem of a novel'
  • Robert Dinsdale
  • Moscow, 1932.
  • Gareth Jones, a young Welsh reporter, arrives in the Soviet Union excited to see for himself how
  • Josef Stalin is forging a new civilisation
  • .
  • He meets American and British journalists who acclaim Stalin’s great experiment – but when
  • Jones witnesses people starving to death in Ukraine
  • , his belief in the Soviet revolution is shattered.
  • He must decide whether to report the truth or become just another useful idiot,
  • saying only what the Communist secret police allow
  • and smothering the evidence of his own eyes.
  • In this special kind of hell, anyone could be an informer, and Jones knows
  • his life will be at risk if he is even thought to be defying Stalin
  • . And when the woman he loves falls under the suspicion of the secret police, everything Jones values is in danger.
  • Can he reveal the terrible truth about the Ukrainian famine to the world, or will he be silenced forever?
  • THE USEFUL IDIOT
  • is the secret history of the first great Soviet lie – wrapped up in an electrifying novel perfect for readers of Robert Harris, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, John le Carré and Kate Atkinson.
  • As Vladimir Putin rewrites the Nazi-Soviet pact and with the horrors of Chernobyl and the Cold War so recent, this thriller of fake news in 1932 is
  • real storytelling of enormous significance
  • .
  • ***
  • 'Dramatic...enthralling'
  • The Observer
  • ***
  • John Sweeney
  • is an award-winning journalist and a former long-serving BBC reporter. He is the author of twelve books, including four novels: THE USEFUL IDIOT, the 200,000-copy bestseller ELEPHANT MOON, another historical thriller based on true event, two modern-day political thrillers, COLD and ROAD. Non-fiction works include an investigation into the Church of Scientology, THE CHURCH OF FEAR and an account of his time spent undercover in North Korea, NORTH KOREA UNDERCOVER. He tweets from @johnsweeneyroar.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(89)
★★★★
25%
(75)
★★★
15%
(45)
★★
7%
(21)
23%
(68)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Disappointing

This is a workmanlike attempt at a thriller, but it falls short all around.
The true Gareth Jones story is compelling, but this version deals in stick figures rather than believable characters.
Only Durranty is clearly drawn, and even then there's no attempt to plumb the depths of his nihilism.
Thrillers based on real events are problematic. This one doesn't begin to meet the challenge.
There are plot holes aplenty. And the whole bit involving film of the Holodomor makes no sense to anyone familiar with cameras, darkrooms, and the reality of photography in that era. Shoddy.