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A review by socraticgadfly
True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy by Kati Marton
4.0
Some reviewers complain this book isn't scintillating enough.
But, that's the whole point, Noel Fields was totally a paint-by-numbers type of person. The fact that someone so bland in such ways could become, indeed, such a True Believer, to become complicit in the death of at least one Stalin-deviating Communist dissident is exactly the point. That said, Ms. Merton never quite shows how there was one decisive point for him in accepting not just Communism in general but Stalinism in particular. On the other hand, maybe there was never one such point, and that itself is part of the story, like Churchill's bon mot about the USSR in general.
But, that's the whole point, Noel Fields was totally a paint-by-numbers type of person. The fact that someone so bland in such ways could become, indeed, such a True Believer, to become complicit in the death of at least one Stalin-deviating Communist dissident is exactly the point. That said, Ms. Merton never quite shows how there was one decisive point for him in accepting not just Communism in general but Stalinism in particular. On the other hand, maybe there was never one such point, and that itself is part of the story, like Churchill's bon mot about the USSR in general.