Battle of Wits jellemzők
Although this book is the work of an historian, it seems more like a thriller. Its alternating settings are the USA, the Soviet Union and divided Europe. Its time frame is the second third of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. Its dramatis personae are post-modern antiheroes, who at first take part as spectators in what seems to be an exciting political game, and are later allowed actively to participate with the proviso that they are not permitted to opt out of it, be it on moral grounds or if they come to realize its mortal danger. Those who attempt to do so end up on the death-list of the Soviet secret services. In Eastern and East-Central Europe heads were rolling as a result of show-trials, but in the USA and Western Europe the Soviet secret services used different methods: there the mysterious cases of deaths proliferated. One victim accidentally fell out of his office window in the prime of his life, while another was executed with twelve gunshots on a highway in Geneva.
