SUNDAY REVIEW / A NOVEL FOR THOSE WHO LIKED TV'S "SLOW HORSES"

The Collaborators by Michael Idov (Scribner)   

Before diving into Michael Idov’s fun, entertaining new espionage novel, The Collaborators, a brief reassurance that the author himself playfully voids: no cats were harmed in the writing of this book.   

But early on, Idov gives us a sly parable—a lonely farmer, a cunning coyote, and a barnful of half-wild cats whose loyalty shifts with every change in the wind. The farmer thinks he’s in charge. The coyote thinks he’s smarter. The cats, of course, collaborate with whoever feeds them last. The fable isn’t cute; it’s a thesis statement. In Idov’s world, collaboration isn’t treason or virtue. It’s survival.   

That theme runs straight into the novel’s engine: Ari Falk, a disillusioned CIA officer, and Maya Chou, a wealthy Los Angeles exile whose troubles suddenly intersect with the geopolitical mess stretching across Latvia, Berlin, and Moscow. Idov’s background as a journalist and screenwriter shows—his Russia is rendered with firsthand textures: the oligarch-era decay, the backroom promises, the “friendships” that dissolve the moment they become inconvenient.   

The pacing? Propulsive. The plot jumps continents with the agility of a well-budgeted limited series. Falk brings the weary craft of someone who has read too many top-secret cables. Maya brings emotional volatility and social access money can buy but never fully control. Together they form the kind of odd partnership spy fiction always hopes to achieve—uneasy, believable, and tinged with fatalism.   

Idov’s strengths land hard. His Moscow feels authentic. His dialogue crackles. The bureaucratic rot inside Western intelligence services feels depressingly recognizable. Reviewers have praised the novel’s sense of lived-in post-Soviet reality and its sharp, sometimes cinematic set pieces. The book is fun, fast, and occasionally fearless.   

But it’s not without quirks. Some plot turns feel engineered for the screen rather than the page—one too many tight corners, one too many globe-trotting leaps. Maya’s transformation from heiress to operator can feel abrupt if you’re measuring authenticity with a protractor. And the tradecraft itself leans more toward stylish tension than meticulous realism.   

Even so, The Collaborators succeeds on the level that matters most: it entertains while quietly poking at the moral knots of the current geopolitical moment. Idov suggests that in a world run by power, money, intelligence agencies, and the myths nations tell about themselves, everyone is a collaborator at some point. Some knowingly. Some desperately. Some like those cats—merely trying to stay warm and out of the jaws of local coyotes.   

Recommended for readers who enjoy contemporary spy fiction with a modern bite. Call it 4 out of 5 stars—a slick, muscular thriller with enough insight to elevate it above the genre’s usual churn.