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Dispatch from a Cold Country
An award-winning journalist with twenty years of experience in Washington and Moscow, Robert Cullen has won critical acclaim and a wide readership as a novelist. Now, in Dispatch from a Cold Country, Cullen unfolds a riveting story of murder, greed, high-stakes crime, and corruption at the highest levels of power in today's Russia.
Though recently promoted from reporter to editor at The Washington Tribune, Colin Burke has few illusions about life. It's a cold, hard the closer things get to Burke, the more detached he becomes. Then Jennifer Morellione-- his eager, young protégé--places an urgent, breathless call from Frankfurt. Morelli has stumbled onto the story of a lifetime in St. Petersburg, and she has film to back up her findings. The subject is too hot to discuss over the phone, but she wants Burke to publish the story. They arrange to meet in Washington, D.C., that night.
She never makes the meeting. And to find out why, Burke returns to Russia--where he had put in long, hard years as a reporter--and tries to piece together the story that Morelli uncovered.
As Burke gropes through the dark, seedy maze of Russian politics, he suspects that the Hermitage, a place of pure beauty filled with the world's most breathtaking art, is at the center of the dark scandal Morelli was about to expose. He follows his hunch and becomes involved with a ravishing African-American woman named Desdemona McCoy, a Petersburg art gallery owner who may be more than she appears. Their passionate, tumultuous love affair is but one more strange twist in a tangled web of betrayal and clandestine maneuvering. For what Burke discovers blows all his expectations out of the a crisis that could explode the fragile Russian government.
Writing with an insider's intimacy about the uses and abuses of power, Robert Cullen brings to life the intersecting worlds of art, espionage, and politics. A spellbinder of a book, at once deeply literate and relentlessly exciting, Dispatch from a Cold Country propels Robert Cullen into the top ranks of suspense writers.
Though recently promoted from reporter to editor at The Washington Tribune, Colin Burke has few illusions about life. It's a cold, hard the closer things get to Burke, the more detached he becomes. Then Jennifer Morellione-- his eager, young protégé--places an urgent, breathless call from Frankfurt. Morelli has stumbled onto the story of a lifetime in St. Petersburg, and she has film to back up her findings. The subject is too hot to discuss over the phone, but she wants Burke to publish the story. They arrange to meet in Washington, D.C., that night.
She never makes the meeting. And to find out why, Burke returns to Russia--where he had put in long, hard years as a reporter--and tries to piece together the story that Morelli uncovered.
As Burke gropes through the dark, seedy maze of Russian politics, he suspects that the Hermitage, a place of pure beauty filled with the world's most breathtaking art, is at the center of the dark scandal Morelli was about to expose. He follows his hunch and becomes involved with a ravishing African-American woman named Desdemona McCoy, a Petersburg art gallery owner who may be more than she appears. Their passionate, tumultuous love affair is but one more strange twist in a tangled web of betrayal and clandestine maneuvering. For what Burke discovers blows all his expectations out of the a crisis that could explode the fragile Russian government.
Writing with an insider's intimacy about the uses and abuses of power, Robert Cullen brings to life the intersecting worlds of art, espionage, and politics. A spellbinder of a book, at once deeply literate and relentlessly exciting, Dispatch from a Cold Country propels Robert Cullen into the top ranks of suspense writers.
- GenresMystery
409 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 1996
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About the author
Robert Cullen
56 books11 followersBob Cullen is a former international correspondent for Newsweek and the author of four acclaimed thrillers, including the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Soviet Sources.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 21, 2020
A suspenseful thriller dealing with art theft and forgery in Russia during the 1990's.
July 6, 2009
A thriller set in turbulent mid-1990s St Petersburg, starting Colin Burke, an editor for the Washington Tribune. One of Burke's friends, who took a recent trip to the Hermitage in St Petersburg, was brutally murdered. Suspecting a link, Burke takes off for Russia, ending up in the middle of some shady Russian gangsters, Leonardo da Vinci, Columbian drug lords, art historians, newspaper turf wars, a beautiful American art gallery owner, and the Russian people themselves--struggling to survive amidst the political chaos, the rampant crime, and the freezing February temperatures. A little technologically dated perhaps (the lack of cell phones in books like this always makes it obvious that they aren't contemporary), but otherwise a fast and intriguing read, even today.
June 27, 2009
I'm going to have to check a few of the untranslated words with my Russian buddies to be certain that I gleaned the meaning from context. I can see this as a Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis movie.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews