The Bookworm: A Novel by Mitch Silver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Bookworm was a great mystery, a bit of a political thriller and a bit of a literary, history fiction book. I received a free copy from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Lara is a history professor who spent part of her youth in the U.S. where she also went to university. She is brilliant and even was a chess prodigy when she was younger. She is approached by an unknown person with a bag of audio reels from the 1940's with some pretty damning evidence against the U.S. and its role in the fight against Hitler. She is asked to translate the six audio recordings from English to Russian and help the source of the recordings find a book that is the subject of the recordings.

Lara, who is very skeptical about the contents of the recording until something said in the recordings sparks a memory and she begins thinking that the recordings just might be authentic. What is not authentic are all of the people and groups trying to get into her good graces to obtain the book for their own purposes. The Bookworm hints at the two leaders at the center of what is now something that can cause a lot of trouble for both the Russian government and the U.S. government. As she investigates the contents of the recording it seems that a lot of things might be tied together as her twin brother Lev, who has been working in Alaska, stumbles upon another aspect of what just might be a conspiracy, against who is the big question. The Bookworm is a book that appeals to readers of multiple genres and definitely makes me want to investigate more by the author.