The Glasnost Conspiracy

The Glasnost Conspiracy is a nostalgic thriller—a parable about Cold War paranoia.

B. Jay Reich’s The Glasnost Conspiracy is a fun and fast revenge story set during the dying days of the Soviet Union.

As the novel begins, NSA officer Arnie Rosen is set to reveal all the dirt he has on Charles Van Damme, the head of the CIA’s European Division. Van Damme is a double agent who is not only spying for the Russians, but is helping diehard communists from the old regime move to central and western Europe.

Then, on an ordinary suburban day outside of DC, two of Van Damme’s thugs slaughter Rosen’s entire family. This cold-blooded murder sets Rosen on a global chase after Van Damme, moving from sunny Key West to the rainy streets of Europe. When events come to a dramatic head, the two adversaries air their struggle in a hearing room inside of the US Senate.

This is a taut political thriller, its action immediate and continual. Rosen and Van Damme are perfect foils for each other, with Rosen standing as an aggrieved everyman on a righteous crusade to expose duplicity and corruption. Van Damme is a quasi-aristocratic and cynical sleazeball who sees government service as a chance to strike it rich.

Added to this two-man quarrel are excellent supporting characters, including Otto, a computer genius who is Van Damme’s unwitting dupe, and Rosen’s friend, Mark—a normal guy who commits himself to a massive undertaking out of loyalty. Through them, it becomes clear that state machinations have damaging impacts on individuals.

This is a Cold War throwback thriller whose view of American intelligence agencies is too sunny and which is set at a time when the US faced off with Russia in a clear way. Its historical sensibilities are stronger than its thriller aspects because its perspective is so dated.

Each chapter builds upon the action of those before it, and the story reads in a clean, linear way as a result. Each chapter reads like a self-contained drama, and there is no wasted space. Conversations are direct, and action scenes restrict themselves to the most important details, never losing focus on the central revenge tale. Concluding on a delicious cliffhanger, the end reframes Rosen and Van Damme from the perspective of the KGB and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Glasnost Conspiracy is a nostalgic thriller—a parable about Cold War paranoia.
BENJAMIN WELTON (July 11, 2019)

- Foreword Reviews

Recalling the plots of John LeCarré’s novels, B. Jay Reich’s espionage tale The Glasnost Conspiracy is full of unexpected twists and turns and a constant sense of “what’s happening now?”

The story, set in the 1980’s, is basically a mano-a-mano struggle between Arnie Rosen, a CIA analyst with a Special Forces background, and Charles Van Damme, the callous head of the CIA European Division, who will stop at nothing to achieve his ends.

When Rosen’s wife and children are slaughtered by Van Damme’s men, out to seize the file Rosen has built proving Van Damme’s collaboration with the Russians, Rosen swears to destroy Van Damme’s reputation and then kill him with his own hands. Van Damme wants to kill Rosen, as well, but soon
realizes that won’t be easy. The chase that follows takes readers from Washington D.C. to Key West, Berlin and New York City, with guns blasting and bodies falling everywhere.

Rosen and Otto Gruhaber—a milquetoast computer genius duped by Van Damme and critical to helping Rosen expose his nemesis—eventually confront Van Damme in the Senate Hearing Room in Washington before the final plot twist is revealed.

Pages filled with graphic violence, dialogue with accents and dialect, and lavish descriptions of cities and buildings like Berlin’s Spandau Citadel Arsenal (“red, luminous brick; dozens of detailed statues of warriors and maidens protruding like the quills of a huge, red porcupine”) make for exceptionally realistic reading, a key strength of the story.

Unfortunately, typos and extraneous detail often prove distracting. For example, when Rosen is rescued from assassins in the Citadel, the author stalls the action to describe one attacker’s history of brutality in the Berlin police department, fantasy of himself as invincible, racist superman mentality, and his father’s Nazism—all of which seem unnecessary for such a minor character.

Still, the book offers rich settings that armchair travelers may enjoy. Espionage fans will also find some rewards in the twisting tale.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.

- BlueInk Reviews

A debut thriller pits a CIA analyst against a traitor driven by an ambition to commandeer the agency.

Arnie Rosen is a research analyst at the CIA who’s spent the last two years investigating his superior, Charles Van Damme, the chief of the European Division. Arnie has compiled irrefutable evidence that Van Damme has been clandestinely collaborating with hard-liners in the KGB, an organization supposedly dismantled in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise but really biding its time to reassert itself. Van Damme loathes the diminishment of the agency into “one limp dick” following the conclusion of the Cold War, and plans to furnish a group of “Glasnost Conspirators” within Russia with the specifications for a cutting-edge, U.S.- manufactured spy satellite. But before Arnie can hand over his evidence to the proper authorities, his file is stolen from his home and his wife and two kids are murdered, a crime for which he is framed. Arnie is arrested and temporarily incarcerated at Fair Oaks, a psychiatric facility, from which he escapes after assassins attempt to kill him. Reich—combining a generous measure of both frenetic action and wild implausibility—clearly details Arnie’s implacable search for revenge. He asks his old mentor, Fred Marquand—nicknamed “Papa” for his “obsessive emotional affinity for Hemingway’s life”—for help, and he arranges for his getaway to Germany, where he can continue to track Van Damme. The novel’s pace never slackens—the entire work pulses with a frenzied energy. But the plot is overwrought and hyperbolic—Van Damme is a comic-book villain who likes to spell out his evil plans in hubristic detail. In addition, the author’s prose ranges from hyperventilated melodrama to wooden awkwardness:
“Van Damme slid Felicia’s fingers toward his crotch. She left them there, rubbing small circles over his organ. He smiled, accelerating toward home. Everything was going just right!”

A taut spy tale that delivers an improbable plot.

- Kirkus Reviews