Alan S. Cowell Knihy

Shelby, whose escapades as a foreign correspondent are legendary, is a true relic from the heyday of print news. Shelby's definition of being a journalist involves gun duels in the Middle East, risky love affairs, and calling in his dispatch at the last possible moment. Now sequestered in the shabby Paris office, safely behind a screen, his identity begins to fracture - and ever more inexorably he is drawn back toward the one unforgettable woman of his life, Faria Duclos, who has mysteriously turned recluse in another part of the city. As the newspaper threatens to crumble, long-held rivalries and ruined passions rear their heads, and intrigues of the newsroom begin to boil over.

In a page-turning narrative that reads like a thriller, an award-winning journalist exposes the troubling truth behind the world s first act of nuclear terrorism. On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London s Millennium Hotel. Hours later the Russian émigré and former intelligence officer, who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, fell ill and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering his murder. Alan S. Cowell, then London Bureau Chief of the New York Times, who covered the story from its inception, has written the definitive story of this assassination and of the profound international implications of this first act of nuclear terrorism. Who was Alexander Litvinenko? What had happened in Russia since the end of the cold war to make his life there untenable and in severe jeopardy...