I’d appreciate any opinions you might have about covers for my new novel.
Here’s a synopsis of the novel. Then a series of cover submissions. Please let me know if any seem good (or if any seem impossibly bad), or if there are elements of several that you prefer. (Yes, there are some that I truly don’t like at all, but they are included both as idea generators and also because, perhaps, what I dislike is not the same as what you and readers in general dislike.)
Please let me know your thoughts. Many thanks.
Sir Winston Churchill’s 1939 description of Russia being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” remains true today. Mission: St Petersburg is not as presumptuous as to try and solve this puzzle (Churchill proposed a solution in the next sentence of his speech). But I draw on my regular visits to Russia, time living and owning a business there, a Russian wife, and interactions with Russian diplomats in the US to build a story around the perplexities and contradictions that comprise Russia around the turn of the millennium.
In the novel, an honest Russian scientist is compelled by the difficulties of living in Russia to sell the submarine technology secrets he has developed, via a shady business associate and that person’s nephew, the Russian Consul in Seattle. Although these people believe they are selling the technology to a fishing company, it is a front for the US Naval Intelligence, who are desperate to obtain the technology. A Naval Intelligence Officer travels incognito to St Petersburg to conclude the deal, but an honest Russian Special Investigator is on the shady business associate’s trail and knows what is happening.
The businessman attempts to bribe and influence his way to immunity via the KGB (now known as the FSB) and offers to betray the scientist, the Navy Officer, and potentially his nephew too. A duplicitous American Diplomat, an accidental shootout, and a problematic escape by slow train heighten the stakes while the angry involvement of Russia’s President bullies the CIA into refusing their support when the mission needs it the most. What happens to the Consul in Seattle, can the scientist and his family escape to the West, and will the Navy Officer marry the scientist’s daughter?
The plausible plot combines action with intelligence (both the brain and spy types) while blending in facts that only an insider would know (eg FBI agents don’t wear their guns in the office so as not to scare the civilian female secretaries) along with revelations of life in the extraordinary environment that was Russia then and sometimes still is Russia today (eg the danger of being killed by falling icicles in the streets of St Petersburg).
The book has been checked for accuracy by submariners and FBI agents. A sequel, Mission: Seattle, is presently being written.
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