An ex-Soviet professor plays amateur detective in this post Cold War romp by New York Times bestselling spy master Robert Littell.
Lemuel Falk, a theoretical “chaoticist,” has been denied permission to leave Russia for the last twenty-three years, likely because he knows a few state secrets. Even he is surprised—and wary—when his twenty-fourth request is approved, and he is offered a position as visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York.
But as soon as Professor Falk arrives in America, he is plunged into a new kind of chaos—including a high-stakes academic catfight, an affair with a much-younger hairdresser, and cascading offers from domestic spies looking to capitalize on his knowledge—and soon finds himself playing amateur detective at the behest of local police. While he helps hunt for a dangerous serial killer, he grapples with ghosts from his own past in Russia.
In this wholly original novel, Littell explores chaos theory, questions of faith, and the ironies of contemporary America.