The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak

Hello everyone. I hope you're having a great day.

We've been meeting this way for over five years now; we're getting close right? I feel like I must confide in you something extremely personal.  My husband and his friend "B" won World War II.  They played army in hubby's backyard.  Two little boys with those green plastic soldiers, the pooled pad attached to their feet, knowing both of them ...covered in dirt, trying to free those occupied by the Nazis.  Today, when they are on the phone, look out.  Talk of the past is flying by at lightning speed.  Everything was at one time a Caroll's Restaurant or some kind of obscure burger barn.  Every stop light on every single street (and they lived in a large beach city) is someone's corner, Edgar's corner, Bobby Sherman's corner, Romper Room's Corner. They know every owner and their house on their side of town, when it was painted, and when the trash cans are rolled to the curb.  If someone from the family worked in the garage on 17th Street...well, that was an extra hour of chat. One of the topics that frequently seems to come up is those darn little green men, soldiers, Martians would be more interesting.  I wonder if that is why hubby loves spy books so much.  He's grabbed a couple of mine.  Here is one he smuggled out of my tbr.

I recently read The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak. While the title evokes images of a snow ensconced covered landscape, this novel is not set entirely in Finland, however, and begins on a hot day in Rome. There, a nervous Russian Citizen tries to warn those within the U.S. Embassy about a pending event. The man’s information leads diplomat and spy Amanda to uncover a much larger global conspiracy.  She and her coworkers disguise, surveil, and deduce their way to the truth. But a name within a dead politician’s notes may lead Amanda to places she and her family don’t want to go.  

The story moves along, the characters are realistic, and there seems to be hazard at every turn. What more could a spy novel ask for?

Honestly, I try my best NOT to listen to hubby's conversations.  How many decades can one person hear about The Sea Shanty for?