Cold Warrior by Yuri Malenkovich

One of the Buddhas of Bamyan destroyed by the Taliban in 2001: thanks to Wikipedia 

Title: Cold Warrior 

Author: Yuri Malenkovich

Publisher: not known 

Source: TV movie Murder She Wrote: A Story to Die For 

Yuri Malenkovich, former head of the KGB and now writing his memoirs about his time as an agent, probably disguised as thrillers, attends a conference in order to publicise his latest book. Jessica Fletcher is also at the conference and Yuri gives her his new manuscript to read. He doesn’t come across as a nice person.

The latest book appears to be The Secret Web. A publisher has offered a $2M advance. He has also written his secret KGB memoirs.

Jessica’s intern at the writers’ conference is John Mendoza. He seems like a pleasant young man, and is, of course, wrongly arrested for the murder of Yuri Malenkovich. Why? He happened to be opening the boot (trunk) of his car with a manuscript of his own book in his hand. It quite plainly says on the front page ‘Mind Trance by John Mendoza’. We expect he was going to ask Jessica, or one of her writer friends, to cast an eye over his first book.

In Cold Warrior Yuri details his time in Afghanistan, and tells his readers about the time he found a man who claimed to be an American journalist (who was telling the truth) who he murdered and dumped in a ditch. Unfortunately, Jessica’s friend Warren Pierce, also an author with a keen fan desperately hoping for an autograph, recognises the circumstances of his son Brett’s death and determines to get his revenge. However, how he learned the exact circumstances of his son’s death we have no idea.

Anyway, we start out feeling very sorry for Warren, and end up wondering: seriously… what was he thinking?

Thanks very much to Harvard University