"A darkly humorous farce with satirical undertones and an unconventional love story."
In 2024, Alexey, a young Russian of draftable age, is sent on a mission to Istanbul to retrieve the true head of Saint Sergey of Radonezh, the patron saint of Russia. At the same time, Angela, a young CIA officer, is sent to Istanbul to receive a secret device from a Russian defector.
Angela at first mistakes Alexey for the defector but soon realizes her mistake. Alexey and Angela, who has learned Russian from her grandmother, become close friends.
But a colonel in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, who has been assigned to work with Angela, continues to believe that Alexey is the defector, and his efforts to retrieve what is actually the head of Saint Sergey cause a ridiculous amount of trouble.
Alexey has some absurd problems trying to get the saint's head back to Russia, while Angela finds herself in danger as she continues trying to find the real defector and retrieve the secret device.
Industry Reviews
"In Keech's spy novel, an unlikely Russian emissary gets caught up in espionage.
Thirty-year-old Alexey Mikhailov travels from Nidgye, a small village near the Georgian border, at the behest of his mother, who wants him to visit the reliquary of Russia's revered Saint Sergey at a monastery a few dozen miles outside of Moscow and plead for the saint's intercession in Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine (Alexey's father is indifferent, being an "old Soviet atheist holdover"). Specifically, the reliquary is for the 14th-century saint's head; the priests serving there have recently been disturbed by online claims stating that their relic is fake and that the actual head of Saint Sergey currently resides in the Orthodox church of Ioann Russkiy, Saint John the Russian, in Istanbul. The clerics ask Alexey to disguise himself as a priest and go to Istanbul to investigate-as he's eager to avoid the draft, Alexey quickly agrees. He travels to Istanbul, meeting a wealthy young man named Ivan (who will come back into his life in an unexpected way later in the story) as well as Angela Walker, a CIA operative under a cloud from a previous screw-up who's been sent to Istanbul with U.S. Defense Clandestine Services Col. Michael Flint in order to intercept a mysterious Russian asset bearing an even more mysterious device. Angela and Alexey take a strong liking to each other, but everything is complicated by the pompous colonel.
Keech stirs all of these elements into an utterly delightful mixture of high-stakes spy-drama and droll satire of high-stakes spy-drama. Alexey is a perfect hapless everyman whom readers will instinctively root for, delighting in the hijinks and scrapes he gets into in his quest to bring the saint's head back to Russia. The double ending the author arranges is both heartwarming and appropriately cynical. Espionage fans will find much here to love.
A wry and fast-paced spy thriller unfolding in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia." -Kirkus Review
