From Publishers Weekly
Nearly 20 years after Russian composer Boris Nikolayev mysteriously failed to join his wife and daughter in their Paris defection, the celebrated musician is being allowed to perform in the West, at a festival in Finland. His daughter, renamed Hedy Lucas and now a New York-based biographer, intends to recover her father at last. Her mother warns of danger, so to avoid being snatched by the KGB, Hedy will pose as the writer of a projected book about the musician. Her boyfriend, congressman Jesse Newman, doesn't want her to go to Finland either, and not only because he worries for her safety: her erstwhile Russian lover is scheduled to be at the festival and he fears losing Hedy to Alik. Yet it is this same Alik whom Hedy suspects betrayed her father years ago. Smith (The Watcher) sometimes gets carried away with her depiction of the Russian artistic temperament. But she knows her Russian characters more intimately than do most writers of this genre, and by the time Nikolayev explains why he did not defect in Paris, American readers may realize that the decision to leave behind one's language, culture and land can be a more difficult choice than simply picking freedom over tyranny.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Russian composer Boris Nikolayev mysteriously failed to join his wife and daughter in their Paris defection. Some 20 years later, his wife is dying of cancer and his daughter with her new name and the westernized lifestyle of a New York based writer finds out that he is due to perform in the West, in Finland. Despite the danger, she decides to go to Finland in disguise to find out from her father what really happened all those years ago. The author's first novel "The Watcher" was winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
