by Ace Atkins
First published 2025
Peter Bennett watches his mother's new boyfriend Gary slip a gun into his Porsche glove compartment. The fourteen-year-old knows something is wrong. Gary has no phone listing, speaks with a strange European accent, and seems too interested in Peter's mother's job at Scientific Atlanta, a defense contractor. When a coworker at the lab turns up dead, Peter realizes Gary might be a Russian agent. No adult will listen to a kid obsessed with BMX bikes and MTV. Peter recruits Dennis Hotchner, a washed-up pulp writer, and Jackie Demure, Dennis's drag performer friend. Soon a Russian assassin with a Phil Collins fixation hunts all three. FBI agent Sylvia Weaver investigates the murder and uncovers a spy ring operating in Atlanta. Her probe faces sabotage from a corrupted colleague working with a hypochondriac KGB defector playing multiple sides. As Reagan and Gorbachev prepare for nuclear talks in Geneva, the fate of the Cold War may depend on what a suburban teenager can prove about his mother's dangerous romance.
Genres: historical-fiction, adventure, mystery, thriller, action, espionage
Vibes: fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, found-family, unlikely-allies
Setting: Atlanta, Geneva, Russia, Scientific Atlanta
Period: 1980s, Cold War
368 pages · Hardcover · Corsair