THE LOST SPY An American In Stalin's Secret Service

Cy Oggins spied for the Russians from 1926 to 1943. For that his employers locked him up twice in the gulags and finally killed him. The author fails to let us get to know the man or to ever reveal what he accomplished. Narrator David Chandler treats the sentences one at a time. He raises his voice to a crescendo by the middle of each and drops it at the end, unable to make a natural transition from one to another. The effect gives every sentence undeserved importance, a consequence the author doesn’t intend. Since our spy lived in France, Germany, Russia, and China, Chandler faces many foreign names and places. All of them make him sound uncomfortable in his pronunciations. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2008]