BEST OF THE YEAR: Amazon’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022 • Amazon Editor’s Choice • Oprah Daily’s Favorite Books of 2022
“This masterful historical thriller blends espionage, domestic drama, and murder. In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the final coda to the Cold War and ushered in massive geopolitical and social change. . . . This evocative murder mystery vividly captures what happened on the Eastern side of the wall on a political level—including how the cache of secrets ultimately found its way to the CIA—and a personal one, from the perspective of an unusual protagonist, a sympathetic East German spy with a complicated and messy home life.”
—Oprah Daily, “Our Favorite Books of 2022”
“Winter Work is a gripping, tightly plotted old-school spy novel. . . . Claire [Saylor] makes a welcome return from Fesperman’s last book, The Cover Wife. . . . Berlin—’spying’s most storied theme park’—is vividly rendered, as is a time of convulsive change and the hopes, anxieties, and machinations of those caught up in the chaos.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“[A] well-paced thriller. . . . Fesperman accurately depicts the corrosive effect of life under a surveillance society, debasing both the watchers and the watched. . . . Most Cold War spy novels focus on the Manichaean ideological struggle between East and West; this one successfully explores a grayer era.”
—Ben Macintyre, The New York Times
“Winter Work is Mr. Fesperman’s 13th novel of spycraft and international intrigue. Like its predecessors, it does not disappoint.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A well-crafted examination of truth, honor, and loyalty in a shifting world.”
—The Christian Science Monitor, “Ten Best Books of July”
“The story leads to an exciting conclusion—a thoroughly surprising spin on the typical spies-on-the-run finale—but it is the relationships among the principals that give the novel its depth andpower. Like Joseph Kanon in The Berlin Exchange, Fesperman builds his story around the inner lives of his characters, an approach that transforms typical espionage tropes into universal human drama.”
—Booklist *starred*
“[A] superb spy thriller. . . . The action builds to a deeply satisfying denouement. Cold War-era spy fiction doesn’t get much better than this.”
—Publishers Weekly *starred*
“An engrossing, deep-in-the-weeds thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews *starred*
“Dan Fesperman is one of my favorite thriller writers, and Winter Work is a brilliant addition to his magnificent oeuvre. Intelligently written and plotted, based on fact as gripping as any fiction and only improved by Fesperman’s deft writing, Winter Work left me spellbound and hungry for another pass at his older books to relive these intense adventures.”
—Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sierra Six
“Winter Work vividly captures those chaotic first months after the Berlin Wall came down, with East Germany in free fall and once feared Stasi officers running for cover—into the hands of their former enemies. An entertaining thriller about a society turned upside down.”
—Joseph Kanon, New York Times bestselling author of Istanbul Passage and The Good German
“Winter Work is just fantastic. With a meticulous eye for detail and a true feel for the unsettled tension of the times, Fesperman pulls the reader deep into the chilly world of an empire crashing with an utterly compelling story. Out-of-work Stasi officer Emil Grimm is one of the best characters I’ve read in years.”
—Olen Steinhauer, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Tourist
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