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WORK TITLE: Moscow at Midnight
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Berlin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Berkeley, CA.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, and journalist.
WRITINGS
Contributor to newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Die Zeit, New Yorker, and Monocle.
SIDELIGHTS
Sally McGrane is a writer, journalist, and novelist living in Berlin, Germany. She was born in Berkeley, California and grew up in San Francisco. She has written for major newspapers such as Die Zeit, the New York Times, New Yorker, and Monocle.
Moscow at Midnight, originally published in German, is a spy novel. Protagonist Max Rushmore is a former CIA agent who has recently been let go by the American spy group. He has been hired by a private contractor for a position much like the one he had in the CIA, but with less pay and fewer benefits. Maybe most galling of all, he doesn’t have access to the nearly unlimited expense account he enjoyed as a CIA operative. He is assigned a mission to look into a suspicious death in Moscow. The dead person is Sonja Ostranova, an inspector on nuclear disarmament team who supposedly died eight months earlier. Ostranova was not only an expert in nuclear waste disposal, she was also quite beautiful. As Rushmore pursues his investigation, he begins to find clues that suggest Sonja is still alive. Soon, he realizes that his search needs to shift from finding a dead woman to locating one that is still very much among the living.
On the other side of the investigation, Sonja has switched identities with a dead woman and is undertaking a search of her own. A quantity of high-level radioactive waste is creating a threat. Apart from the radioactive material, however, is a connection to diamonds and large amounts of money. Rushmore pursues his target through Russian cities, nuclear waste sites, small towns, and a diamond mine, while also moving through Germany, France, and Italy. When things look bleak, he manages to find the right people to help him in his search. Yet finding Ostranova isn’t easy, especially since she’s traveling under someone else’s identity. He has one clue that could finally turn the tide and allow him to zero in: a rare Siberian diamond. It will take all of his well-earned investigative abilities and every trick he learned at the CIA to finally track down his quarry and find out the meaning behind her actions.
The novel is “spiced up by an interesting and unexpected diversion into a peculiarly Russian form of scientific mysticism,” commented Alastair Mabbott, writing in the Scotland Herald. “McGrane is good at giving the reader a sense of sharing inside information” during the scenes of intrigue and spycraft, noted a Publishers Weekly writer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Herald (Scotland), October 28, 2017, Alastair Mabbott, review of Moscow at Midnight.
Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2018, review of Moscow at Midnight, p. 99.
Sally McGrane was born in Berkeley, California and grew up in San Francisco. For the last decade, she has lived in Berlin. As a journalist, she writes for The New York Times, newyorker.com, Die Zeit, Monocle and many others. She has written about the "Elevator-Rescue Teams of Moscow" (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-elevator-rescue-teams-of-moscow); a German forester who says trees talk to each other (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/world/europe/german-forest-ranger-finds-that-trees-have-social-networks-too.html); and swimming in the river Spree (http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-07/flussbad-spree-pokal-museumsinsel-10nach8). "Moscow at Midnight," published in German as "Moskau um Mitternacht" is a spy novel. Max Rushmore, newly downsized from the CIA, is hired by a private contractor to return to Moscow in more or less his former capacity--albeit with less pay, minimal job security, and no health insurance. There, a routine inquiry into the accidental death of the beautiful nuclear waste disposal expert Sonja Ostranova turns into a journey that takes Max across Russia, from St. Petersburg to Novosibirsk, as he follows his only clue: A rare Siberian diamond.
Moscow at Midnight
Publishers Weekly. 265.13 (Mar. 26, 2018): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Moscow at Midnight
Sally McGrane. Contraband (IPG, dist.), $14.95 trade paper (250p) ISBN 978-1910192-81-8
A private contractor hires former CIA agent Max Rushmore, the hero of journalist McGrane's uneven first novel, to travel to Moscow, where he's to verify the death eight months earlier of Sonja Ostranova, a nuclear disarmament inspector. When Max comes across hints that Sonja is still alive, he sets out to find her. Meanwhile, Sonja, having swapped identities with a convenient corpse, is searching for a deep secret involving high-level radioactive waste and, somehow, diamonds. Max moves about Russia, from city to nuclear waste site to diamond mine, with side trips to Berlin, Paris, and Venice, and serendipitously meets just the people who can help him. The diverse cast includes taxi drivers, old peasant women, and international spies, but characters come on stage and off seemingly at random. McGrane is good at giving the reader a sense of sharing inside information, but the story scurries from place to place with spritely abandon and an occasional leap into fantasy, besides at times being difficult to follow. McGrane shows enough talent for readers to hope for better next time. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Moscow at Midnight." Publishers Weekly, 26 Mar. 2018, p. 99. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532997154/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=77791e33. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532997154
28th October 2017
Paperbacks: Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler; You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris; Moscow At Midnight by Sally McGrane
Alastair Mabbott
Moscow At Midnight by Sally McGrane (Contraband, £8.99)
American secret agent Max Rushmore is back in the field, but with the agency downsizing him he’s been contracted to a private concern, which means, among other things, that the generous expense account he’s used to has been curtailed. He’s been sent to Russia to investigate a woman’s apparent death, which is his gateway into the mysterious world of closed cities, diamonds and the covert processing of extremely toxic nuclear waste. Happy to be back in the saddle, Rushmore finds his way to progressively colder and more remote parts of Russia with a combination of resourcefulness and an unusual degree of empathy for the people he meets. The story is spiced up by an interesting and unexpected diversion into a peculiarly Russian form of scientific mysticism, but McGrane’s low-key approach all too frequently gets it bogged down in flat conversations in grim bars, apartments and offices. With more dynamism, the storytelling might have lived up to some of the more intriguing ideas.