Book reviews -- The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin

The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War. By Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin. (New York: Scribner's, 1992. xviii + 488 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-684-19068-0.)

This book is a thriller with dead drops, deep covers, voiceless telephone calls, grim men in dark overcoats, prostitutes, and more. From April 1961 to October 1962, Col. Oleg V. Penkovsky of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) served as a zealous but reckless spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and M16 (British Secret Intelligence Service). Then he was arrested by the Soviet secret police and apparently later executed. Peter Wright, Spycatcher(1987), and Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession (1986), among others, have told the story before, although they dispute the interpretation offered here by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin, that the officer was a legitimate, dedicated...