For years, Alex Ostroff churns out unsuccessful, unpublished
manuscripts. His rejection is complete when he's rebuffed by London's
literary set and unceremoniously thrown out of a party by the host. His
exasperated literary agent encourages Alex to write what he knows, but
the writer is loathe to reveal anything about himself. Alex follows the
advice, however, mining his childhood for material.
The son of Russian expatriates, Alex certainly has a compelling past.
His parents, glamorous figures living in France under assumed names,
worked with a shadowy Frenchman named Felix Dumont in a mysterious
import-export business that involved fraud, forgery, blackmail, and
murder. Drawing from these memories, Alex's new novel, Troika, finally
lands the struggling author some acclaim.
As his writing career--and the media's fascination with him--gathers
steam, Alex questions much of what his parents have told him. And when
he unexpectedly encounters Dumont in London, he learns the dark truth
lurking behind the fictions of his life.