Review: Rasputin's Shadow by Raymond Khoury


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An ingenious, fast-paced historical thriller from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Last Templar
On a cold, bleak day in 1916, all hell breaks loose in a mining pit in the Ural Mountains. Overcome by a strange paranoia, the miners attack one another, savagely and ferociously. Minutes later, two men—a horrified scientist and Grigory Rasputin, trusted confidant of the tsar—hit a detonator, blowing up the mine to conceal all evidence of the carnage.
In the present day, FBI agent Sean Reilly’s search for Reed Corrigan, the CIA mindcontrol spook who brainwashed Reilly’s son, takes a backseat to a new, disturbing case. A Russian embassy attaché seems to have committed suicide by jumping out of a fourth-floor window in Queens. The apartment’s owners, a retired physics teacher from Russia and his wife, have gone missing, and further investigation reveals that the former may not be who the FBI believe him to be.
Joined by Russian Federal Security Service agent Larisa Tchoumitcheva, Reilly’s investigation of the old man’s identity will uncover a desperate search for a small, mysterious device, with consequences that reach back in time and which, in the wrong hands, could have a devastating impact on the modern world.
Packed with the twists, intrigue, and excitement that Khoury’s many fans have come to expect, Rasputin’s Shadow will keep readers turning pages long into the night.



I received this book from Book Tribe  to give an honest review. The rating is 4 1/2 stars.

I am not a big fan of spy novels as sometimes it doesn't catch my interest as much. But with this book just by reading the blurb I knew I had to give this book a try and I am glad I did. The author kept me engage night after night. I kept going are they going to capture the bad guy, who is on our side in this and who is on the other side. 
The only problem I had with the book hence why I gave it a 4 1/2 star rating as one of the main characters FBI Agent Sean Reilly kept bringing up his son and something happened to Alex. What it was never really clearly made out so I do not know if there is maybe another book that has Sean in it and tells what happened or not. 

Other than that problem with the book for me it was a great story. FBI Agent Sean Reilly is searching for a couple who has gone missing but the teacher is more than just a teacher! Agent Sean starts getting answers as to what really happened to him and the man that fell out of his window. What he finds out is more bizarre than you would imagine  Now the the hunt is on to find the device (which scares me as I wonder if it could really be built) that Leo has built and it all comes down to the wire. 
It is a fast pace, you go back and forth (though not too much) between the present and the journals. 
The bodies are starting to pile up and it is going to take some brains to figure out where Koschey is going to take this machine and hit next. 
If you want to read a good spy novel that will have you wondering what is going to happen next you have to pick this book up. 
 

About the author:
Raymond moved to Rye, New York, from his native Lebanon at the outbreak of the civil war there in 1975. After graduating from Rye Country Day School, he returned to Lebanon to study architecture at the American University of Beirut. During his years there, in between repeated flare-ups of fighting, he illustrated several children's books for Oxford University Press's Middle East office. Raymond completed his degree just as the civil war erupted again, and was evacuated out from the city in February, 1984, by the Marine Corp's 22nd Amphibious Unit on board a Chinook helicopter. 

Raymond moved to London and joined a small architecture practice. The architecture scene in the mid-80s throughout much of Europe was going through a severe downturn, and the work was far from fulfilling. He decided to explore other career options and applied to the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France. After graduating from its MBA program, he moved back to London where he joined Banque Paribas Capital Markets, selling gold-linked convertibles and other far less exotic financial instruments. 



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