A Very Expensive Poison

Old school spies, a horrible murder, old secret soviet nuclear cities that never appeared on a map. This is this book. Well written, deeply researched. Reads like a John Le Carré thriller. Written by Luke Harding who was Moscow editor for The Guardian at the time.

That sounds patronising. It isn't meant to. I was always fascinated by this story and that was my reason for buying the book. But what I discovered was a realistic detailed account of what happened told in a gripping way by an obviously talented author. Now I can highly recommend the book even to those with just a desire for a good read - for that is what this is. The fact that the story is true however, makes it both thrilling and shocking. Read it for information or just for a good read. But read it.

This is a great book around the Litvinenko case, who was once a secret agent in Mordor. Mordor is a country governed by State terror and criminal acts. Litvinenko was once assigned to kill a friend and he resisted and the great leader of Mordor didn't iike that and consequently Litvinenko had to flee to the UK. Mordor's criminal organization has infiltrated in almost every free country and when Litvinenko was helping to uncover this in one country he became eligible for immediate killing. The leader of Mordor, the capo di capi, sends two trolls to murder him with the very expensive radioactive poison Polonium-210. This poison that is only produced in Mordor is believed to be undetectable. Luke Harding, once bureau chief in Mordor's capital, shows us that State terror from Mordor is not limited to Mordor only. Based on the inquiry held in London he leads us well through the Litvinenko case and nowhere in the book the abundance of information gets dull and consequently you want to keep reading and discover the next surprise. Also his observations about the atmosphere in the Litvinenko inquiry are well sketched.

Excellent, well written book. Detailed information about a Russian defector and the Russian government's attempts to silence him. I highly recommend this book.

Ruthless murders of individuals as a national strategy? No problem -- at least not for Russia. Several of these "tactical murders" comprise the subject of Harding's book. His personal experiences with perpetrators and victims alike add dimension to what might otherwise have been a dry narrative. Assuming that Harding's reportage is accurate, the broader message for the world is that current Russian leadership will stop at nothing -- literally nothing -- to protect its corrupt system. Don't expect elegant prose. Don't even expect good editing. DO expect to be engrossed in story line that will stimulate your thinking about world affairs, Russia's role, and, most urgently, what can be done to check the malevolent activities of Russian leaders.

This extraordinary real life story gives a frighteningly real picture of today's Russia and the criminal behavior of its leaders, including Putin

Finely written. The story flows like a novel. Great information.

Followers of present day Russia and their political reactions to the West will be very interested in this well told story.

In London, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned. To the men who ordered his killing, he was a traitor who held dangerous views about the Russian leaders he had previously worked for. Yet, he was also a husband and a father. A man who was trying to provide for his family, having fled his country and moved to London to start a new life. I will admit that I knew very little about this case. Like many others, I saw the photograph of Litvinenko in hospital as he lay dying. I read his moving statement and was impressed at his personal bravery and stoical response to events. In fact, he was far braver than I imagined – using his final days to provide the police with as much evidence of the events that had led him to his terrible, and unusual, death. The author of this book worked for four years in Moscow, before being expelled from the country. During his time in Russia he also came under the scrutiny of the authorities – finding his apartment being broken into several times, for example – and also coincidentally travelling on a plane with a man carrying a lethal amount of polonium… For, in October, 2006, two men from Moscow landed at Gatwick. They were questioned at the airport, but there was no reason to stop them entering the country; other than the intuitive feeling of one man. His intuition, though, was right. The two men, elusive and evasive, were carrying a ‘very expensive poison’ which they intended to use as a hi-tech murder weapon. By far, the most fascinating part of this book is where we follow these two men on various trips to London, with orders to kill a Russian émigré who had fled to Britain six years previously. A critic of Putin, who had worked for the Russian intelligence service and now worked for MI6. These two men left a radioactive trail around London, as they made various bungled attempts to kill the man who considered them as, if not friends, acquaintances. His need to make a living in his new country made Alexander Litvinenko careless. If the authorities had considered his fears of being killed more seriously, possibly he would not have been in the position where he was forced to let his guard down. We must also consider the two men who the author says carried out the poisoning; Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitry Kovtun, who are accused in this book of not only killing a man, but who glibly poured this extremely dangerous substance down various hotel sinks and could possibly have caused a major health disaster (at one point, one of the men even told his young son to shake Litvinenko’s hand, aware that he had just touched the poison). It is a terrible thing to admit to being so gripped by a book about such a terrible event, but this is an important story and I do feel that Alexander Litvineko would have wanted this book written – after all, he was an author and you feel that, had he been lucky enough to survive, he would have not shied away from the subject himself. The events in these pages are often so bizarre they read as more fictional than non-fiction. This though is a real life spy story, where a man who (coincidentally) shopped in my local supermarket and was taken to my local hospital, bringing this story close to home for me personally, as killed. This book takes us through those events, and on through the police investigation and inquiry into what happened. What is certain is that Litvinenko knew what could happen to him, understood what had happened to him and desired justice enough to be totally calm and tell all he knew to the authorities in London – who he trusted. I feel that this book really does tell his story the way he would approve of and that is why it is worth reading.

Recommended reading. Good narrative, a journalist one, and a balanced approach. Highly recommended book, especially after the new similar case, the Skripal case.

Compared to more 'civilized' ways to ruin the lives of their opponents, the mafia and their supporters/beneficiaries in Russian government act surprisingly stupid and unprofessional. Despite all the terror and harm those mafiosi inflict on others there is hope that this kind of extraordinary stupidity and negligence will not prevail.

Harding never fails to impress. Extensively cited, meticulously researched, and presented with clarity, the book also reads like a riveting spy novel. A must read.

An excellent account of investigative journalism, reads like no less than a suspense thriller.