... a terrifically paced page-turner with convincing red herrings and a surprise ending. These feats are not to be understated. But Vidich also succeeds in crafting incisive portraits of characters, who face their own internal and domestic conflicts ... Without ever slowing the pace or detracting from the novel's central mystery or action, Vidich still manages to carve out time in his taut narrative to provide snapshots of men trapped in personal cold wars of their own making. This focus on character gives the novel a cinematic quality, updating the spy genre while still tipping its hat to the beloved tropes that fans know and crave.

... terse and convincing ... The reader already knows 'what happened,' thanks to a prologue that chronicles the grim episode in cinematic detail. But rather than dissipate suspense, this foreknowledge adds another level of interest as Gabriel seeks witnesses and documents to fill in the blanks about Wilson ... his stand-alone work reaches a new level of moral complexity and brings into stark relief the often contradictory nature of spycraft ... Mr. Vidich maintains the tension until the very last page—and then, in the book’s acknowledgments, gives his fiction a further twist by revealing its true-life origins in his own family history.

It’s a triumph of the novel that it gives us a story imbued with psychological depth and emotional intensity and yet distanced enough to be balanced. This is a measured interpretation of what might have happened in real life and the most logical way the story could have been told as an espionage novel ... If there’s a better spy novel this year espionage fiction fans will be able to count themselves very lucky indeed. The Coldest Warrior rings true, it’s not about the game it’s about exposing the raw emotional core of the story, the wounds opened up by living with deceit and lies. It’s not just that this is a mesmerising story drawn from life, it’s also an insightful dissection of the psychopathy of the Cold War ... this novel has heart, a profound understanding of the human consequences of the secret war ... The emotional intensity and fierce intelligence of this tale make it a tense read, it is a thought provoking drama.

Vidich rarely gives much description of a scene or personal appearance but sketches the interior of a character—and all his significant ones are men—deftly and sharply ... disclosure comes more from the author's revelatory passages, and less from the situations playing out ... the first few chapters of The Coldest Warrior aren't the greatest quality—whether from overworking, or hasty rearrangement, or careless editing, it's impossible to know. Yet Vidich soon blooms with powerful moments and short snippets of insight that cut deep ... The book spins quickly into risk and danger, and the final chapters, fast-paced and dark with threat, provide one of the best manhunt and intended escape sequences of current espionage fiction. One could quibble with the very last scene, a bit soft for a book of such terse 'noirish' narrative—but the heart of the book is so good that it's an important one to grab, read, shelve, and think about.

... succeeds on two levels. First, Vidich’s story has momentum and never flags. He does a nice job detailing Gabriel’s investigative methods (including exhuming a body to conduct an autopsy) and incorporates some fun tradecraft (chalk marks on a mailbox to signal a meeting; homing devices placed under the dash of a car). There’s a scene in which two men are rowing on the Potomac that is simply thrilling. And watch out for a nice twist at the end of the novel ... In addition, Vidich raises vexing moral issues through his storytelling.

... based on true events, events which touched the author personally. It’s hard for an outsider to tell just how true the events conveyed in the novel are, but in this age of the NSA being accused of spying on American citizens and accusations of foreign meddling in American elections, nothing feels outside the realms of possibility. It’s scary how true and timely The Coldest Warrior feels. It’s not just for those with an interest in American politics, however, it features as tense a murder mystery as you’d find in the latest Scandinavian crime fiction hit ... Fans of the espionage fiction of John Le Carre or Graham Greene will find a lot to love in The Coldest Warrior which gives an insight into Washington, DC as the Cold War thawed out in the post-Vietnam War era. The world has changed since then, and I felt several time that the events Vidich writes about couldn’t happen now. But the thing about espionage fiction is that it gives us a window into a secret world, one which most of us have no idea about. This is why The Coldest Warrior is so timely and yet so timeless – it reminds us to keep asking ourselves just what our governments are capable of, and what can be justified. All while telling a compelling and thrilling murder mystery.

Nonfiction and fiction author Vidich...presents a fast-paced, historically accurate thriller, placing him alongside other great spy authors such as John le Carré and Alan Furst. Readers of the genre will want this slow-burn chiller that shows how far government will go to keep secrets.

Vidich generates plenty of tension as Gabriel attempts to sort out who is after him and then constructs an elaborate plan to carve out a separate peace. In the manner of Charles Cumming and recent le Carré, Vidich pits spies on the same side against one another in a kind of internal cold war.

Based on the real-life case of biological warfare scientist Frank Olson, Vidich’s lean, crisp third CIA novel...recreates, then reimagines, the circumstances of Olson’s still-unexplained death ...Vidich, a former media industry executive with no spycraft background, writes with the nuanced detail and authority of a career spook. With this outing, Vidich enters the upper ranks of espionage thriller writers.

Overall, the novel's pace is a little slow and the plot one-dimensional, but the characters of Gabriel and his family and of Wilson's surviving family are vivid and sympathetic. Vidich...acknowledges that his novel is based on the story of Frank Olson, who "fell or jumped" from a New York City hotel room in November 1953, and fidelity to historical fact may account for the pace and plotting. But this fidelity also reveals a shameful instance of postwar conduct and the arrogance of the powerful ... A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.