One of the — many — things that makes this book so riveting is the extraordinary blend of precision planning and amateur dramatics in MI6’s escape plan. Gordievsky knew that the British had spotted his signal when a man coming towards him bit very conspicuously into a Mars Bar ... As he has often proved before, Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else. He has a remarkable ability to construct a narrative that is as taut and urgent as it is carefully nuanced. Here the pace never slackens and the focus never drifts, while Macintyre’s insight into his subject’s tangle of contradictions never loses its sharpness. It’s a tough call, but The Spy and the Traitor may well be his best book yet.

Ben Macintyre’s wonderful The Spy and the Traitor complements and enhances Gordievsky’s first-person account ... Macintrye had no access to MI6’s archives, which remain secret. But he has interviewed all of the former officers involved in the case, who tell their stories for the first time. He spoke extensively to Gordievsky, who is now 79 and living in the home counties – a remarkable figure, 'proud, shrewd and irascible'. The result is a dazzling non-fiction thriller and an intimate portrait of high-stakes espionage.

[Gordievsky's] story has been told before, not least by himself in the autobiography he wrote in retirement in Britain, but it has found its ideal chronicler in this exceptionally rewarding book by Ben Macintyre. Over the past decade, from his breakout success with Agent Zigzag to his biography of Kim Philby...Macintyre has built an entirely justified reputation for his true spy thrillers. Those books were good, but this one’s better. In fact, it feels a little like he has been waiting all the time to tell us about Gordievsky, since this story is so much bigger than those he has told before ... Macintyre’s prose is elegant and enlivened with occasional asides that are eminently quotable, as well as inevitable nods to the classics of the spy genre, above all John le Carré ... The Spy and the Traitor...is in no doubt that Gordievsky was serving a cause that was just and correct...His decision to hand the KGB’s secrets over to Britain was a 'righteous betrayal' ... Moscow did not see things that way of course and Gordievsky, who is living somewhere in the suburbs, remains under sentence of death. The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, another Russian who spied for Britain, in Salisbury earlier this year, gives this book an unexpected contemporary relevance. We are back in an age of tensions between the west and the Kremlin and we need people such as Gordievsky just as much as ever.

The subtitle of Macintyre’s latest real-life spy thriller calls it 'The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.' Like pretty much everything in this fine book, the description is accurate ... Spy services, especially the British, normally guard their secrets obsessively, successes as much as failures. But MI6, as it’s popularly known, decided to let Macintyre tell this story, including more than 100 hours of taped interviews with Gordievsky. Remarkably, Macintrye was also able to interview every British intelligence officer involved in the case ... Macintyre has become the preeminent popular chronicler of British intelligence history because he understands the essence of the business. Real espionage is the opposite of James Bond gunplay and panache. It’s about waiting, planning, shadowing, hiding. At the core of espionage is deceit, but truly great operations such as the Gordievsky case require deep human trust.

The best true spy story I have ever read,' says John Le Carré of The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre ... Yet it has already been told authoritatively by Gordievsky himself in his autobiography, Next Stop Execution, published in 1995 (and republished in 2015), which included a nail-biting description of the double agent’s desperate flight from Moscow afte ... So why has Macintyre told it again? And does he provide new information about Gordievsky or new insights into the business of espionage? ... The claim that Gordievsky at least contributed to the ending of the cold war and indirectly to the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union is a challenging one. Macintyre lends it some weight. It should be noted, however, that these insights, though persuasively described by Macintyre, have previously been revealed by Andrew, who has been close to Gordievsky since his defection ... Macintyre tells us disappointingly little about Gordievsky’s thirty-plus years in England since his escape. One wonders how happily he managed to settle into a placid British suburban existence ... Whether Macintyre has expanded our knowledge of Soviet espionage is debatable, but he has made it even more entertaining.

Although none of this will come as a surprise to those familiar with Cold War history, Macintyre tells the story brilliantly. His book’s final third is superbly done, the tension mounting relentlessly as Gordievsky realises the KGB are on to him ... For Gordievsky, the ending is bittersweet. But as with any good spy thriller, it would be a shame to give it away ... On the last page of his compelling account, Macintyre describes Gordievsky as 'one of the bravest men I have ever met, and one of the loneliest'.

The story has been told before — including in Gordievsky’s own autobiography — but Macintyre’s account brings it to life in vivid technicolor with fascinating new details. He tells it with all the verve we have come to expect from such an accomplished writer. As well as Gordievsky himself, Macintyre says he has had the assistance of all the living MI6 officers who worked on the case. This provides an unusually detailed sense of what the relationship between an agent and a spy service really looks like ... Beyond the importance of Gordievsky in terms of his intelligence, the book tells a very human story about one man’s decisions.

...Macintyre brings depth, perspective and storytelling panache. ... Running with the quarry is exciting stuff. While it is, of course, interesting to read about the considerable impact that Gordievsky's spying had on the outcome of the Cold War, and fascinating to unpack his motivations for betraying his country, all of it, as in any good spy story, is a prelude to the peripeteia, the cold-sweat moment of discovery ... The gripping account of Gordievsky's exposure, interrogation, and escape is Macintyre at his finest: multiple points of view, escalating tension, pungent detail.

For over a hundred years the British have excelled at the fiction and the fact of espionage ... It takes an investigator of consummate talent and a narrator of equal skill to unearth one of these triumphs and explain it clearly. Ben Macintyre, who is both, has done exactly that ... If any spy writer were to put it in a novel, it would not be believed. But, blow by blow, trick by trick, it is all in Ben Macintyre’s book.

Even a reader not enamored of spy stories will have trouble putting this one down ... The whole story, including Gordievsky’s return to Moscow...unfolds with a pace and drama that recall the novels of John le Carré.

In retelling the story of Oleg Gordievsky...Mr. Macintyre is...traveling well-worn ground. But for a number of reasons The Spy and the Traitor is far less successful in offering a new understanding of the mindset of the double agent ... Mr. Macintyre adds some new drama to his retelling, thanks to the extraordinary access he gained to the MI6 officers involved in the operation ... From interviews on the Russian side, the author also gleans some previously unknown details ... One of the shortcomings of nearly all true-life spy tales is that the primary source is inevitably the spy himself. Many long passages in Mr. Macintyre’s book that recount his conversations and thoughts are taken directly from Mr. Gordievsky’s earlier memoir. The author rarely questions his rationalizations and explanations, and the few fresh quotations he gleans from 100 hours of more-recent taped interviews sound perfunctory and well-rehearsed.

Fans of Macintyre’s previous non-fiction accounts...will pounce on this latest offering. It carries all the qualities of what Macintyre has so justly become known for – precise research leading to even-handed assessments, and, where possible, using first-hand accounts to reduce the level of speculation that is otherwise so enticing to those attempting to understand the past. The Spy and The Traitor represents Macintyre’s finest work to date and has the makings of an instant screenplay ... The book provides very important context about Gordievsky’s early professional career in Denmark, and the awakening of his extraordinarily principled and brave decision to abandon a Soviet way of life. Thankfully not sanctioned by or written with the help of the British government, Macintyre makes the authority of his book complete by employing good old-fashioned journalism – tracking down every single MI6 officer involved in the case and talking to them. He also spent time with the Russians to get the other side, as well as with Gordievsky himself ... The story, however, isn’t yet over.

Macintyre has terrific material to work with, and in general he keeps a firm grip on it. But in recounting every aspect of espionage tradecraft, in addition to each problem that arises in the courtship of Gordievsky by British intelligence and the histories of all of the many MI6 agents who ran him, not to mention the ever-so-complicated details of Gordievsky’s 'exfiltration' from the Soviet Union, Macintyre’s story sometimes bogs down. On the other hand, God is in the details, and it’s hard to imagine that there could ever be too many of those when the full account of our current engagement with Russian espionage and the Americans who have enabled it is finally written.

...[a] captivating espionage tale ... In a feat of real authorial dexterity, Macintyre accurately portrays the long-game banality of spycraft—the lead time and persistence in planning—with such clarity and propulsive verve that the book often feels like a thriller. The book has a startling relevancy to the news of the day, from examples of fake news to the 1984 British elections in which 'Moscow was prepared to use dirty tricks and hidden interference to swing a democratic election in favor of its chosen candidate.' Macintyre has produced a timely and insightful page-turner.

The closing pages of Macintyre’s fluent yarn find Gordievsky attempting to escape captivity and flee to the West in a scenario worthy of John le Carré ... Oddly timely, given the return of Russian spying to the front pages, and a first-rate study of the mechanics and psychology of espionage.