CHARLIE MUFFIN AND RUSSIAN ROSE

Originally published in 1985, this is the sixth novel in the series about the anti-Bond British spy, Charlie Muffin. The scruffy, unscrupulous, irascible, profane, working-class, cunning Muffin has gotten himself railroaded into a long prison sentence. If he agrees to a dangerous mission behind the Iron Curtain, MI5 will restore him to the service and to freedom. A love affair with his Russian female counterpart threatens to derail his mission and get him sent to a Siberian gulag or worse. To this derring-do, Haywood Morse contributes a fine sense of the dramatic and a bottomless trunk of character voices. Further, he has a fine sense of the author's casual, sardonic tone. Only in the love scenes does he falter. But the author is much to blame for that. Y.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 04]