Greco’s Game: An Aleksandr Talanov Thriller – review

It was a fantastic read, to be sure! The character Talanov is designed in a fashion that it will surely take a hold of the reader’s mind until the novel ends and only to be continued in the further instalment of the series! Greco’s Game: An Aleksandr Talanov Thriller is a novel by well-known novelist James Houston Turner, a US novelist famous for his thrilling fiction. This novel has everything that a reader would like to read in a spy thriller – this is full of action which is written in such a way that as a reader, you don’t only read but you can just visualise as if everything is happening on a screen. You have to be impressed by the writing skills of the novelist and finally, his novel has reached among the Indian readers so that they can also enjoy the great work – full of thrill and adventure and politics and serious social issues like human trafficking and also a kind of unlikely romance between the hero of the novel and the lead female character – Larisa. Greco’s Game: An Aleksandr Talanov will surely keep you enchanted and especially those who love reading spy and thriller fictions or love movies of the same genre. This novel is for the dynamic readers who love reading animated fiction in which the plot is full of surprises and awe-inspiring events – fight scenes – reveals – patch-ups, and a great enjoyment reading all these!

The central character in the novel is an ex-employee of KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), formerly the state security department of the Soviet Union. Talanov is a middle-aged man with reflexes almost matching that of James Bond’s or Ethan Hunt’s on the screen. He can fix the dudes of young ages with ease but also gets beaten at the very beginning of the novel. He is rescued by a beautiful prostitute who later becomes his beloved and they go through several twists and turns through the course of the novel. Talanov is looking for the killer of his wife and he is often fired up with rage and a kind of disillusionment with life. And that is why for a photograph of his deceased wife, he almost gets himself killed!

The language and rhetorics (at times) used by the novelist are kept well in synchronisation with the common readers and never veer out of the communication zone. Readers can understand the what they read at the same time. And I have to admit that in the novel, you can find the witty and humorous side of Turner in play on several instances. I have liked the following one very much:

“THE glamorous Hollywood & Highland Center is an example of architectural confusion and marketing genius.” pp257

This spy thriller novel by James Houston Turner kept me involved and I hope it would keep you engaged too because it has that kind of grip. The writing style of Turner is far more serious and at the same time he can light up the scenes of intimacy as well as eventful fights which erupt almost anywhere Talanov is and reading everything is just a wonderful experience! Other than Talanov and Larisa, several other characters hold an important role in the novel and out of those many, Ilya, Jade, Wilcox, Bill and Borzakov (the villain) are important ones.

Turner has surely weaved a wonderful spy thriller but he has also kept his journalistic values intact in the novel with the introduction of the human trafficking angle in it. Larisa and Jade and many other women are lured with the promises of good jobs and they end up playing into the hands of likes of Borzakov and are compelled to be the sex-slaves.

To conclude this book review of the novel, Greco’s Game: An Aleksandr Talanov Thriller, I would just say that now that book has been launched in India, those who are the fans of thriller novels must give this amazing novel a quick read – you can now get the paperbacks delivered at your doorstep in no time as well as you can also but the Kindle edition which will be rather cheaper and also portable for a read anywhere – in the bus, metro, on the beach or just anywhere! I am seriously amazed by this work and I hope you will also have the same experience to share with your fellow readers once you finish the novel in the coming days. You can buy this novel from the link below:

Turner’s Greco’s Game on Amazon (Kindle Edition)