MOSCOW BY NIGHTMARE

Moscow by Nightmare could only have been written in some Russian tearoom -- it's that sort of Bolshoyt even if bravely compared to Helen MacInnes and John Le Carre both at the same time. Vannie, so innocent she's stupid, whose husband is a journalist and goes away conveniently for the time here (conveniently for Vannie who drifts down from her upper berth to the lower of an unknown Russian in a compartment en route from Moscow to Leningrad) has lots of real Russian friends, artists and even a geologist whose uncle was recently assassinated. This means that there's a chill in the thaw and that Vannie's address book is taken (she really couldn't remember where she left it) and a cassette and that she's being used to pass on the wrong information (but of course she didn't know it). If you think that women don't have the sense they're bom with, Vannie won't change your mind.