Book Review: ‘The Bucharest Legacy: The Rise of the Oligarchs’

Plenty of action and complex plot in this post-Cold War spy thriller

The action in "The Bucharest Legacy" takes places in Bucharest, Romania. Scene at sunset at the Bucharest Library. Razvan Dragomirescu/Shutterstock

In his follow-up to his incredible debut, “The Bucharest Dossier,” William Maz takes the reader on an adventure back to Bucharest a few years after the dismantling of the USSR, the fall of communism, and Romania’s Christmas Revolution.

“The Bucharest Legacy: The Rise of the Oligarchs” is the second in the series, of which, it appears, there might be a third. Bill Hefflin, the analyst-turned-spy-turned-retired-billionaire, is ushered back into the world of espionage. There are familiar faces from the debut novel, but for the most part, it’s a new set of players. Bucharest plays the primary setting with New York City tossed in, but it is the capital city of Romania where Maz exhibits his deftness for detail.

The Cold War Is Over

Cold War spy novels offer a strange sense of nostalgic romanticism. It was an era wherein the lines between the good guys (the West) and bad guys (USSR) never blurred, at least not in fiction. But that era is over at the opening of Maz’s second novel set in 1993, and the romanticism has gone with it.