‘The Collaborators’ by Michael Idov

Published by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd,
30 January 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-3985-3776-7 (HB)

The Collaborators is a modern, convoluted spy thriller that zips along at a good pace. It begins in 2021 following a report that a Russian-American billionaire, Pavlik/Paul Obrandt, had committed suicide by jumping into the sea off Tangier. Although the cold war had theoretically ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1995, trust between the USA, its European allies and Russia remains limited. CIA and Russian agents are still keeping an eye on each other and quietly doing their best to embarrass each other’s political masters.

In Berlin, CIA agent Ari Falk learns that his best asset has been “disappeared” ie probably shot after being whisked off a plane that had been diverted into Belarus. Ari immediately begins investigating who else was on that plane. Could Paul Obrant - now known to have scarpered with, or to have lost, billions of dollars of investors’ money - still be alive? Had he also been “disappeared” from that diverted flight? If so, who was responsible for these actions?

In Los Angeles, Maya Obrant, Paul’s daughter also challenges her father’s death.  Skipping his funeral, Maya flies off to visit a house in Portugal her father has bequeathed to her. The cryptic note she finds there convinces her that he is still alive.

Determined to find her father, Maya travels to Tangier where she and Ari meet unexpectedly whilst exploring a boat in the harbour. The couple swap information and passionate embraces. Given that others will undoubtedly be looking for Paul Obrant and the missing money, they agree that they would be safer apart. Circumstances contrive to bring them together. 

Harlow, Ari’s CIA boss, knows a lot more about Paul/Pavlik’s background than he is letting on. He watches as Ari and Maya travel to Moscow to contact a Russian banker and former GRU general Gennady Demin. For highly relevant, historical reasons of his own, Demin is anxious to trace the missing billions.

Neither Ari and Maya are happy with their lives, but both display a dogged and sometimes foolhardy determination to get at the truth as they wiz around between Riga, Berlin, Portugal, the USA, Tangier, London and Moscow. The story revolves around love and money. Set in the present era, like others of its kind it almost inevitably embraces long shadows from the past. Even avid readers of spy thrillers may fail to work out what is going/ has gone on or why. It is however, well worthwhile trying to find out.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther 

Michael Idov is an award-winning journalist, a screenwriter, and the author of the novel Ground Up (FSG, 2009). From 2006 to 2012, he was a contributing editor at New York magazine and won three National Magazine Awards for his writing; he edited GQ Russia from 2012 to 2014. Born in 1976 in Riga, Latvia, Idov moved to the United States in 1992 and currently lives in Berlin.

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.