• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 September #1
  *Starred Review* English village housewife Ursula Burton seemed no different from her neighbors. But this woman who kept a neat garden, baked scones for the local school, and biked country lanes was in fact a highly trained Soviet spy, one of the most dangerous. Principal contact for a number of Soviet agents, she handled Klaus Fuchs, who passed detailed plans of atomic and thermonuclear bombs to Stalin, radically upending post-WWII diplomacy and setting off the Cold War. Born into a prosperous German Jewish family, Ursula Kuczynski became fanatically anti-Nazi and a dedicated communist. After spending time in America, in Shanghai she was part of an expatriate group that included Agnes Smedley, journalist and firm supporter of both Indian and Chinese communist revolutionaries. Ursula, married to an architect, had several affairs, including with Richard Sorge, often considered a model for James Bond. Eventually Ursula ended up in England, where she eluded British intelligence services for years. Macintyre (The Spy and the Traitor, 2018) tells this convoluted, multi-layered story with the sensibilities of a novelist, making every character uniquely compelling while keeping suspense high and the narrative charging ever forward. In this must-read for fans of spy novels, truth becomes more exciting and astonishing than fiction.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020 Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.