During the peace talks just before the iron curtain is lifted, Sam Hollis and Lisa Rhodes, while on night duty at the American embassy in Moscow, get a phone call from an American tourist named Gregory Fisher. Fisher says that near the Borodino fields, on the road to Smolensk to Moscow, he came across another American, a wounded MIA from Vietnam, running away from the Russian authorities. Sam Hollis arranges to meet Fisher at the Rossiya Hotel, but cannot because Fisher is killed by the Russians; however, Hollis gets some information that Fisher gave to another French tourist, that three hundred MIAs were being held in Mrs. Ivanova's Charm School.
This turn of events pushes Hollis and Lisa to investigate the story with or without the state department's go-ahead. They find that the Russians had used the captured MIA's as instructors for Red Air Force pilots to learn western tactics and procedures, but later the KGB eventually changed the POW camp and turned it into "The Charm School" where Russians are given the final touches to pass as Americans to be injected into USA as moles. Through many twists and turns of their action-packed adventure Lisa and Hollis themselves end up in The Charm School. How they leave the school, or if they leave it, and if they can free the MIAs, is for the reader to find out.

reading once to have a good time if you like suspense.

the intricate way suspense and romance are woven together. It is as if this is two novels in one. One spy-suspense story, the other romance story.

the insistence on the presumption that Russians are so dumb and Americans are so smart. I felt that too much time and effort have been spent over the preconceived belief of American superiority.

entertained because it is a fast-action attention-gripping book, which you really can't put down once you start reading.

Nelson Richard DeMille, an excellent suspense-story teller, was born in New York City on August 23, 1943. He attended Hofstra University where he studied Political Science and History. He has also served in Vietnam.
DeMille has written numerous books of mystery and suspense, such as Up Country, Plum Island, The Lion's Game, The General's Daughter, The Gold Coast, Word of Honor, Mayday, Cathedral, The Plot Thickens, By the Rivers of Babylon, and The Charm School.

It is an exciting book to read although a bit too long. Also the tidbits of Russian life make it very interesting.

I found Nelson DeMille's The Charm School to be emotionally powerful; however, the story, probably due to its length, drags a bit and loses focus at times.

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Created Sep 15, 2003 at 11:24am • Submit your own review...