I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.

And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles of her out there.

This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially,

and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production

of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Today on the show, it's all about fiction.

Now, I've always loved a good spy thriller, whether it's a heady John LeCarray chess game,

or Jason Bourne defying death every 90 seconds.

But right now, it's the old-school spy novels that feel surprisingly and especially current.

Because everything we've learned about Russia and the election of Donald

Trump feels in some way like a Cold War spy novel and not a very believable one at that.

I find Jason Matthews' fiction a little bit more believable than real life.

Matthews was a CIA operative for over 30 years, recruiting spies and informants in the former Soviet bloc and other places.

After retiring from the agency, he started writing.

Matthews' Red Sparrow trilogy is full of surveillance and heavy-breathing sex and the streets of Moscow, and I've got to admit it.

I love it. It's a great diversion. The third book is on the way and it's called, maybe with current events in mind,

the Kremlin's Candidate. You know, the two novels you publish, Red Sparrow and Palace of

Treason, and I presume the next one, the Kremlin's candidate, which is coming next year,

that these books are all set in Moscow, and you tell me you've never been to Moscow. You've

never been to Russia at all? I've absolutely not. I've never been to Russia. I've served in the

...