The cover instantly drew me in along with the blurb: a mysterious phone call with a shattering message and an intriguing cover to match it. The scene is set from there and we are placed right into what one would assume is a normal, loving family until the fateful phone call...

The story unfolds quite slowly, which at first feels intense and gripping. As the book progresses, however, I found this approach incredibly dull. The whole plot could have been told in a much quicker, shorter book which I think would have matched the plot much better. There was mystery, intrigue and all those lovely thrilling things you'd want from something about the Cold War, but-whilst it was there-it felt quite frozen and scattered rather than building up to anything particularly exciting.

I never really found myself enjoying the Detective Sarah. I found she mostly stumbled in to things rather than using any kind of detecting nous, which is usually my main bug-bear in detection fiction. I didn't find her that likeable either, but I don't think there are any particular stand out reasons for this: she just seemed a little meh, a little flat, a little 2D.

I do thoroughly enjoy crime thrillers and prefer ones I can read in one sitting, but I found this quite the chore to get through, even though I did enjoy the plotline: the Cold War is something I've not delved in to that much and have been meaning to for so long, but to be honest aside from the codeword, I never really felt it was particular to the Cold War.

It seemed a decent start but I found it just dragged a little, though if you're looking for a nice bit of crime I think you should give it a go.