I have no idea how this book ended up on my Wish List. When my wife gave me the list of books she bought for my Kindle for Christmas, I had to go look this one up. I’m not complaining, mind you, but it’s still a mystery.

A good mystery, I can report, now that I have read the book Farewell, written by Sergei Kostin and Eric Raynaud, gives a comprehensive look at a little-known spy story which played an incredibly critical role in the ending of the Cold War.

But to accurately review Farewell, I need to break it into two pieces because I had differing reactions to the story and to the book.

The Story

I had never heard of Vladimir Vetrov before I picked up the book. You probably have not either, which is a shame. While he was a complicated and troubled man, his decision to fight back against the nepotism and corruption in the Soviet system changed the world.

Vetrov had chances to represent the USSR as an athlete and worked his way into the KGB. However, through his own faults and the faults of the system, he found himself confined to a desk job analyzing documents other spies had procured from Western nations.

This is how he turned into a very unlikely spy. Kostin and Reynaud cover almost every detail of Vetrov’s life from his early upbringing to minute details of his conversion to a spy for the French. They examine the unique cultural and personal details which affected his decisions.

As someone who grew up hearing how Russia wanted to bomb us and instill their kind of government on the world, I found the insight into the true lives of the Soviets fascinating. The combination of Russian (Kostin) and French (Reynaud) authors comprehensively covered the details without making it completely about the US versus Russia.

Because of this comprehensive research, the book is long, but well worth it.

The Book

Farewell doesn’t always translate to American reader, however. Literally.

The book is an American translation of Reynaud’s update on Kostin’s original book which was published in France because of pressures from Russia to not tell the story.

This makes for some clunky writing which may have been perfectly sound in the French. Sometimes it seems like Kostin is writing. Sometimes it seems like Reynaud is writing. Even more confusingly, sometimes Reynaud turns Kostin into a figure in the book because of the difficulties he had in originally obtaining some information.

I don’t know if a solution exists because these two did such an amazing job, any further effort would probably fall short. The structure sometimes just seemed haphazard, like the time they gave a detailed explanation for some of Vetrov’s behavior only to say that it was implausible because of something that was discovered years after that theory was originally floated.

Great information, but the differences in styles of the two authors and the three countries involved may make you have to work a little harder than expected. Don’t let that scare you away though. Farewell is a story which more people should know about.