Exclusive interview with author Brian Freemantle and a review of his latest espionage novel in the Charlie Muffin Series
Rating: Four Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“During the Cold War, I was banned from Russia for writing a nonfiction book on the KGB,” says Red Star Rising author Brian Freemantle. “In 1982 the only then-available copy was stolen by the KGB at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I decided about five years ago to try to write a trilogy in which three books appeared to have a title link, with a setting in Russia. Each book has a totally self-contained plot to exist and survive entirely on its own. The first was Red Star Rising, published in 2010. Red Star Burning is the second.”
In Red Star Burning, Charlie Muffin, a member of MI5, has a secret that’s about to be revealed. He’s married to Natalie Fedova, a colonel in the FSB (formerly the KGB) and they have a daughter Sasha. Muffin needs the help of MI5 and MI6 to get his family out of Russia alive. However, Muffin’s boss, Gerald Monsford, has another operation planned. He wants to use Muffin and his family as bait to distract the Russians from the real mission.
Freemantle’s Charlie Muffin series started in the 1970s. With the end of the Cold War the character might have been laid to rest, but Freemantle has found ways to keep his character alive and this is his 16th outing. Freemantle’s writing is a bit dense, but has that wonderful dry British wit and humor, and is well worth picking up if you like espionage novels.
Freemantle is a prolific author, and Red Star Burning is his 82nd book to be published. His novels outside the Charlie Muffin series include two featuring Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the Cowley and Danilov series about an American FBI agent and a Russian militia detective working together against organized crime in a post-Cold War world.
Before becoming a full-time author in 1975, Freemantle was a foreign editor at the Daily Mail and a foreign correspondent. In 1975, as Saigon was falling to the communists, he chartered an airliner and rescued 100 orphans before their orphanage was overrun. According to his bio, in 1986 a murder contract was put out on him during his U.S. book tour by Colombian drug trafficker Jose O’Campo. “Payment was to be one kilo of pure cocaine,” says Freemantle. “That part of the tour was canceled upon the advice of the FBI.”
The third book in the trilogy, Red Star Falling, will resolve the dilemma with which Red Star Rising began. Freemantle is currently writing a novel on the use of social networks by organized terrorism. Freemantle lives and works in London, England. He was born in Southampton.
website: http://brianfreemantle.com/
Red Star Burning by Brian Freenmantle. Hardcover, 368 pages, Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (June 19, 2012), Language: English. ISBN: 9781250006363 $26.99
[adrotate group=”8″]
