THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604140273
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
THE PATRIOT
PIERS PAUL READ
Random House. 290 pp. $23.
It is entirely likely that the people of Russia will return a leader of the Communist Party to the Kremlin this summer.
If they do, it will make Piers Paul Read something of a prophet.
Underpinning Read's post-Cold War thriller, The Patriot, is a plot line that has dispossessed true-believers and cashiered KGB killers hatching a scheme to embarrass the West and raise scores of millions of dollars so they can fund a resurgence of the sons of Lenin.
Unfortunately, though, Read takes a story that has possibilities and does little to raise it to the level of plausibility. The settings and politics are post-Cold War, but the essentials seldom vary from the well-trod path of the Cold War and World War II thrillers of Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett.
As ever in this genre, a central character is a brilliant, beautiful, but bafflingly gullible woman. She is Francesca McDermott, an American art historian who is plucked, improbably, from obscurity to organize a major international showing in Berlin of suppressed 20th century Russian paintings.
Her foil, as ever, is a darkly handsome stranger with a hazy background and a penchant for mysterious behavior. This is Andrei Serotkin, the man Moscow sends to oversee Russia's interests in the art show. Predictably, he is not what he seems. Predictably, Francesca doesn't seem to notice. And just as predictably, they become lovers. The only mystery is whether Serotkin, in the end, will be loyal to the lady or the cause.
This formula has propped up far worse novels than The Patriot. A reader willing to overlook some Bolshoi-caliber leaps in logic can become snared in the deceptions of a very well-drawn cast of supporting characters. The secondary players in Read's drama are far more believable - and their motives less transparent - than his protagonists.
Francesca is reunited with Sophie and Stefi Diederich, ex-East German dissidents she knew years before, but whose behavior now has a troubling, off-kilter edge. More compelling, though, is Nikolai Gerasimov, an agent of the former KGB who has survived the overhaul of the Soviet security apparatus and is drawn into the art-show intrigue while investigating the murder of black-market dealers in antique Russian icons.
For Gerasimov, the post-Gorbachev era has brought a descent into a dismal string of humiliations in both his personal and professional lives. The crude cunning with which he dogs his opposition in both realms would be worth a novel of its own. His are the best pages of The Patriot.
Read is the author of a dozen works of fiction, but may best be known for the nonfiction Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which became a highly regarded movie. That story had two advantages The Patriot lacks: It involved cannibalism, and it was realistic. The former might not be necessary for a good thriller, but greater doses of the latter would have elevated Read's latest work. MEMO: Dave Addis is a staff writer. by CNB