Reviews, Forthcoming, New Releases, Overlooked
Dick Wolf | Premieres 26 February 26 on Paramount+
Follows a partnership between an FBI agent and a CIA Case Officer who work together on a clandestine taskforce to prevent domestic terrorism in New York.
Stephen Harding | Citadel | 24 February 2026
They collaborated with Nazis and Fascists. Conspired against Allies in World War II. Committed unthinkable acts of treason. And triggered a secret manhunt as harrowing as any Hollywood cliff-hanger. The mission was part of the FBI’s “European Operation.” The targets were U.S. citizens plotting against their own country. The goal: to identify and capture these traitors hiding in the shadows of war-torn Europe. To accomplish this, a small group of federal agents assumed new identities to infiltrate underground networks, interrogate key suspects, and expose the enemies within the Allied ranks. It is one of the most fascinating spy stories of World War II—and one that’s never been fully told. Until now . . .
Using newly declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act—as well as exclusive interviews with family members of the FBI agents and unpublished accounts of American citizens accused of treason—this meticulously researched book provides shocking new details behind this crucial World War II operation. From J. Edgar Hoover’s attempt to expand FBI operations overseas to the agency’s covert ties to Britain’s MI5; from the shocking exposure of espionage activities in France and Italy to the final convictions of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials—this incredible saga of spy and counterspy is brought vividly to life by author Stephen Harding in what is destined to be a classic of World War II literature.
G.I. G-Men is a must-read for military and history buffs, espionage fans, and anyone who loves a great adventure story.
Sergey Firsov | Amazon | 15 September 25
A Century of Shadows — From Lenin to Putin: Why the Soviet Union needed spies, and why the West became the main theater of the hunt
From microfilm dead drops to malware and “hybrid war,” A Century of Shadows traces an unbroken line of Russian espionage from the OGPU’s first “illegals” to today’s GRU and SVR cyber units.
Through precise, case-driven chapters, the book follows the people who shaped—and were destroyed by—that hidden world: Oleg Penkovsky and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Viktor Suvorov’s challenge to the orthodox narrative of the Second World War; Anatoliy Golitsyn and the CIA’s internal mole-hunts; Oleg Gordievsky’s escape during the Thatcher–Reagan years; Yuri Bezmenov’s theory of ideological subversion; the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the Novichok attack in Salisbury; the exposure of the “Illegals Program”; the Mitrokhin Archive; Kremlin insiders and defectors; whistleblowers from Russia’s Federal Protective Service; the suppression of hypersonics research; and the rise of cyber units known as “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear.”
Measured rather than sensational, the narrative examines how the “Russian spy” became both an instrument of statecraft and a cultural myth—simultaneously feared, theatrical, and enduring—while a detailed chronology (1920s–2026s) maps a century of defections, poisonings, exposures, and swaps.
Expanded Edition
This revised edition adds eight major chapters, including the tragic fate of legendary illegal Dmitry Bystrolyotov, the evolution of internal security services from ideology to digital surveillance, the émigré economist Igor Birman who foresaw the Soviet collapse, and dramatic case studies from Tehran, Berlin, Cyprus, and Moscow.
The most provocative new chapter, “The KGB’s ‘Dead Hand’ in Epstein’s Files,” examines how Soviet intelligence methods—kompromat, coercion, and elite capture—may have survived the Cold War and resurfaced within modern Western power networks. Drawing careful parallels between the logic of automated retaliation and long-term intelligence influence, the book shows how old structures continue to shape new realities.
This is not a conspiracy chronicle, but a sober history of continuity.
Lynne Olson | Random House Trade Paperbacks | March 3, 2020
In 1941 a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization—the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group’s name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah’s Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, “even a lion would hesitate to bite.”
No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence—including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day—as Alliance. The Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade’s own lover and many of her key spies. Although Fourcade, the mother of two young children, moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape—once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell—and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her.
Now, in this dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.