TWISTED REASONS, the first in a trilogy of international thrillers based on arms and human trafficking from a modern ‘rogue’ Russian state, is the tale of two college friends who get drawn into the heist of nuclear material from a former Soviet site.
I first conceived of, and started writing, Twisted Reasons, when I was living in Vienna and traveling throughout the former Soviet Union. I had read a great little book called The Atomic Bazaar, by William Langewiesche, that talked about the ease which with terrorists could get their hands on nuclear material from one of the secret cities where Stalin developed the atomic bomb. Delving further into research on the Soviet bomb, I learned about the many accidents and the utter disregard for human life and the environment in the Russian nuclear program right through to this day. With the International Atomic Energy Agency headquartered in Vienna, and its role in monitoring the disposition of nuclear material from the various sites in the former Soviet Union, I thought this could all form the basis for a great thriller set at least partly in a a city I knew well and loved. In thinking about it further, I found that Graham Greene's novel, The Third Man, and Carol Reed's wonderful film based on it, set in post-War Vienna, which takes the story of two friends, one of whom gets involved in trading tampered antibiotics, would serve as an excellent template for the beginning of my thriller. The two friends in my book have Hungarian-American backgrounds, and this adds an extra layer of depth as I am able to weave some of my own family's experiences in to the novel.WISTED REASONS, the first in a trilogy of international thrillers based on arms and human trafficking from a modern ‘rogue’ Russian state, is the tale of two college friends who get drawn into the heist of nuclear material from a former Soviet site. Arriving in Vienna to find his friend Adam Kallay, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, presumed dead, crime novelist Greg Martens teams up with Interpol Agent Anne Rossiter and Julia, Kallay’s Russian girlfriend, to solve the case and track the disappearance from a former Soviet nuclear site of enough uranium to make a bomb. The story moves from espionage entrepȏt Vienna to radioactivity contaminated Chelyabinsk and to front-line Georgia, as the three combat arms merchants allied to Russian secret police to prevent the stolen uranium from getting into the wrong hands. Along the way, Greg learns brutal truths about himself and his family.
TWISTED REASONS, the first in a trilogy of international thrillers based on arms and human trafficking from a modern ‘rogue’ Russian state, is the tale of two college friends who get drawn into the heist of nuclear material from a former Soviet site. Arriving in Vienna to find his friend Adam Kallay, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, presumed dead, crime novelist Greg Martens teams up with Interpol Agent Anne Rossiter and Julia, Kallay’s Russian girlfriend, to solve the case and track the disappearance from a former Soviet nuclear site of enough uranium to make a bomb. The story moves from espionage entrepȏt Vienna to radioactivity contaminated Chelyabinsk and to front-line Georgia, as the three combat arms merchants allied to Russian secret police to prevent the stolen uranium from getting into the wrong hands. Along the way, Greg learns brutal truths about himself and his family.
Excerpt
February 1949
András watched the scarlet ooze seep through the crystals of the newly fallen snow crunching beneath his feet. This was the third time he had vomited blood that day, and on this occasion, he did not even make it to the latrines.
Professional Reviews
The Ottawa Review of Books
Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann
December 31, 2014
For centuries, Vienna has been a city of elegance and sophistication, a crossroads of Central Europe and a cultural interface between East and West. It is an energetic, uplifting city where the strains of Mozart, Haydn, and Strauss seem to float on the air. During the Cold War, though, by virtue of its location so close to the Iron Curtain, Vienna became something else—a convenient place for opportunists of all sorts to carry on in the shadows of its alleys and side streets. Soviet and American spies hobnobbed easily with black market profiteers with loyalty to no one and nothing, except hard cash.
Nothing is more evocative of this atmosphere than “The Third Man,” Carol Reed’s immortal noir film starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. The film is distinctive for its noir atmosphere, its expressionistic cinematography, and its score, which is played by a single zither. The plot revolves around an American ex-pat, played by Orson Welles, who is supposedly murdered for trafficking in black-market penicillin.
Geza Tatrallyay knows Vienna well and pays homage to “The Third Man” in the initial chapters of his debut novel “Twisted Reasons,” by borrowing a few elements of the film’s plot, notably his protagonist’s name (“Holly Martins” becomes “Greg Martens”) and profession (crime novelist), the mysterious death of his friend (Harry Lime then, Adam Kallay now) in a car accident, and a Russian girlfriend of Lime/Kallay’s threatened with deportation to Russia.
In “Twisted Reasons,” Martens comes to Vienna to visit his childhood friend Kallay. But upon arrival, he finds that Kallay is dead, possibly murdered. An Interpol agent based in Vienna, Anne Rossiter, informs him that Kallay, who worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, had stumbled on a scheme to steal 10 kgs of enriched plutonium from the Mayak nuclear facility, a Soviet-era plant, and sell it on the black market. Unsavory associates of Kallay’s appear, and both they and Interpol try to steer Martens away from investigating Kallay’s death. But Kallay’s girlfriend, Julia Saparova, a Russian physicist working illegally as an exotic dancer, helps Martens discover what Kallay was really up to. Martens travels to Russia with Interpol close on his heels, desperately trying to prevent what the whole world fears most: terrorists acquiring a nuclear bomb.
But where the film sticks to the dark passageways of Vienna and the gritty intrigues of post-war profiteers, Tatrallyay goes farther afield both geographically and thematically. “Twisted Reasons” is the first of a projected trilogy of thrillers dealing with international trafficking in arms and human beings, and the writing in this first volume is infused with impassioned outrage. Tatrallyay has done copious research and tells a detailed story of the simply unbelievable environmental and human cost wrought at the Mayak nuclear facility, the actual scene of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. He brings this alive in two ways, both devastating. The first is through flashbacks to Martens’s Hungarian grandmother speaking about the persecution of her family by Soviet authorities, the disappearance of her first husband—Martens’s grandfather—and her harrowing escape to the West. That makes the reader feel. Then Tatrallyay has the reader see. The drive from the airport at Chelyabinsk to Mayak is a descent into a unique kind of modern hell. The landscape is an ecological wasteland, a site of devastating environmental damage due to decades of USSR’s negligent disposal of nuclear waste. The people, too, are scarred and disease-ridden. The devastation is total and horrific.
In the guise of a relentlessly paced thriller, Tatrallyay has delivered an impassioned plea for justice and awareness.
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