Our Woman in Moscow is a gripping, sweeping historical spy fiction novel about twin sisters caught up in Cold War espionage. Having just listened to Ben McIntyre’s The Spy and the Traitor on Audible (also about international espionage albeit set somewhat later – shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall), I was again amazed how one’s reading journey often develops inadvertent themes. Based loosely on the legendary Cambridge spy ring which delivered top secret documents into Soviet hands resulting in two of the traitors defecting to Russia in 1951, Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams is an excellent fictionalised account of real events and certainly a page-turner.
Iris and Ruth Macallister are twin sisters who spend time in Italy at the height of WWII where Iris meets and falls in love with Sasha Digby, an American diplomat. When Ruth decides to return to the US, Iris stays, marries Digby and lives as a diplomat’s wife until, in 1948, she vanishes from her London home along with her husband and their two children. For the next eight years Ruth is in the dark as to her sister’s whereabouts, until one day she receives a postcard from Iris seeking her help.
In 1952, shortly after getting the note from her sister, Ruth, now a secretary in New York City and de facto manager of a modelling agency, receives a visit from FBI agent Sumner Fox who has questions about Iris. Sumner informs Ruth that her sister had defected to Russia in 1948 with her husband who had worked with the twins’ brother at the US embassy in Rome in 1940 but who has since changed sides.
As the KGB starts suspecting Sasha of working as a double agent, the Digbys’ lives are in danger. Sumner devises a plan to travel undercover to Moscow as Ruth’s husband on the pretext that she must assist Iris during her pregnancy. Ruth and Sumner’s efforts to extract the Digbys from the Soviet Union, however, do not go as planned. The KGB’s tentacles, it becomes clear, reach far and wide, monitoring their citizens’ every move.
Williams keenly observes the inequities women faced at the end of WWII and the simmering suspense of the Cold War. As a historical fiction fan, I was riveted by the complex family ties and the intriguing portrayal of the world of espionage. More than anything, I enjoyed the inside scoop of how the families, and especially the wives, of these notorious spies and double agents were affected by their secrets, lies and actions.
Williams can be commended for creating an original, convincing plot woven around historical events.
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