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Thorn: Spy tale's back - only this time for real

Published April 13, 2007 at midnight

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With the fall of the Twin Towers, the nature of thrillers changed overnight. Suddenly, evil Russian operatives had been replaced by equally evil Islamic terrorists. The Cold War, it seems, had been put on ice.

But now comes word of two new books that bring the terrors of the Cold War flooding back - and in ways more chilling than any le Carre spy tale. Because in this case, we're not talking fiction.

First up, A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, by Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Random House is calling the book, scheduled to be released in May, a "searing, intimate record" of life in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Press material notes that the book will describe how Putin jailed his opponents, muzzled the press and lied to ensure a landslide victory, then went about curtailing the freedoms of the country's citizens once in power. Written as diary entries, the book details the way in which "lives have been devastated by Putin's policies."

Eye-opening stuff. Unfortunately, Politkovskaya won't be here to see its impact: She was gunned down in Moscow in the fall of 2006 - a killing many say was retribution for her journalistic exposes. "A Russian Diary," notes the release, "is testament to Politkovskaya's ferocious refusal to take the easier way - and the terrible price she paid for it."

Sadly, she wasn't the only one who paid such a price. This month, Encounter Books publishes Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror, by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinksy. You may remember photos of Litvinenko that ran in American newspapers: They showed a skeletal man lying on a hospital bed, bald, pale and looking as if he were one fragile moment away from death. It wasn't long before he indeed died, of exposure to polomium-210, a poisoning for which he blamed Putin.

The news story seemed straight out of an old thriller. And Blowing Up only underscores that sense.

Published in Russia at the end of 2003 (well before Litvinenko's death), then immediately confiscated by the government, the book accuses former KGB agents of organizing bombings in Russian cities, then blaming them on Chechen terrorists, in order to stir public support for the war with Chechnya and to help Putin win the presidency in 2000. The authors posit that successors of the KGB (now called the Russian Federal Security Service) have revived "old-style terror" in order to stall Russia's push toward democracy and protect their own power and wealth.

In this edition, Felshtinksy adds a foreword that details the killings of several people who helped the authors , as well as of Litvinenko's flight to London - a tack that ultimately failed to save his life. It's written with crisp, unsentimental detail, all the more frightening for its level-headed tone.

Felshtinksy lives in Boston, where - as any le Carre fan might expect - he has received death threats.

DORN AGAIN

When noted Boulder poet Edward Dorn died of cancer in 1999, his wife, Jennifer, told me that he was never a self-promoter. He never chased publishers or lobbied for public readings."He knew he wasn't playing the game, and a real writer (he believed) doesn't play the game. He was quite clear about that."

Still, he would probably be pleased that his vast oeuvre - he left more than 40 books of poetry, prose and translations behind - has been tapped for a new book, released this month by Penguin, titled Way More West: New and Selected Poems ($20).

DORN AGAIN

When noted Boulder poet Edward Dorn died of cancer in 1999, his wife, Jennifer, told me that he was never a self-promoter. "He knew he wasn't playing the game, and a real writer (he believed) doesn't play the game. He was quite clear about that."

Still, he would probably be pleased that his vast oeuvre - he left behind more than 40 books of poetry, prose and translations, not to mention unpublished pieces - has been tapped for a new book, released this month by Penguin, titled Way More West: New and Selected Poems ($20). And who's to say he also won't be smiling somewhere tonight when local poets, as well as the book's editor, Michael Rothenberg, gather at the Boulder Book Store to read excerpts and pay tribute? Join them at 7:30 p.m. Information: 303-447-2074.

PAPER CLIPS

Jane Smiley's book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, earned far more than 13 raves when it was released. Smiley's exploration of the power of the novel is now out from Anchor Books, $15.95.