The President's Dossier

August 3, 2020
The CIA fires Russia expert Max Geller, the hero of this tense spy thriller from Scott (The Iran Contradictions), after Geller’s scathing email criticizing Ted Walldrum, the new U.S. president, catches Walldrum’s vengeful attention. Now unemployable by official intelligence agencies, Geller accepts an extralegal $10 million offer from a client with an unknown agenda to investigate and confirm the contents of a Russian dossier, compiled by an MI6 agent, implicating Walldrum in tawdry sexual shenanigans, money laundering, and treasonous acts. Geller’s former CIA boss wants Max to deliver the kompromat instead to the agency. Max reluctantly adds Jillian Rucker, an operative working for his client, to the skilled and deadly team he assembles for the task. Max and company travel to England, Russia, and elsewhere in a race to authenticate the evidence before Kostya Zabluda, a Kremlin assassin, eliminates the contacts they’re seeking or themselves. (Max’s burgeoning affair with Jillian doesn’t lessen his distrust of her.) Readers should be prepared for some far-fetched escapades and many an impossible situation simply resolved with a shoot-out, but Scott injects enough spycraft, betrayal, and mayhem to keep the pages turning. Fans of espionage thrillers will be pleased.

September 1, 2020
So the president of the U.S. apparently has some nefarious ties with Russia. There's a dossier full of accusations and names. Max Geller, a disgraced former CIA agent who was formerly stationed in Russia (and who, not coincidentally, is well known to have no use for the president), is recruited by a lawyer representing a group of unnamed people to investigate the allegations contained in the dossier. But not to clear the president's name?rather, to prove he's a traitor. So begins a strange, illuminating, sometimes frightening journey around the world as Max searches for proof of the president's guilt, all the while edging closer to personal redemption (or, by the way, death at the hands of a Russian assassin). Scott, a veteran of the U.S. Army, has concocted quite the interesting, not to mention timely, story, and Max Geller is a likable and multilayered protagonist. For fans of headline-driven spy fare, this one is a solid winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)