Spy fiction at its best: A mission of revenge, a haunting love story, and a chilling tale -- in the definitive novel of the end of the Cold War.

Celebrated for his "palm-sweating tension" (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times) and "rare insight" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Gerald Seymour has scored bull's-eye after bull's-eye with readers and critics. Now, crackling with suspense and finely realized characters, Dead Ground floodlights an East German Stasi as chilling at the collapse of the Communist world as it was throughout its reign of terror.