The Visiting Professor: A Novel

Summary

From legendary espionage writer Robert Littell, bestselling author of The Company and The Amateur, a character-driven post-Cold War romp following an ex-Soviet professor turned amateur detective who finds himself in upstate New York, investigating the mysterious and sudden death of a colleague.

Lemuel Falk, a theoretical "chaoticist," has been denied permission to leave Russia for the last twenty-three years—likely because he knows a few state secrets. He is shocked when his twenty-fourth request is approved and he is offered a position as visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York.

As soon as Professor Falk arrives in America, a fellow professor dies under mysterious circumstances. When he agrees to assist in the investigation at the behest of local police, he is plunged into a new kind of chaos: a high-stakes academic catfight, an affair with a much younger woman, and cascading offers from domestic spies looking to capitalize on his knowledge—all while the ghosts from his past in Russia return to haunt him.

A wholly original novel from a master of intrigue, The Visiting Professor is a portrait of chaos theory, the limits of rationality, and the ironies of America.