@philiplazar
Author of "The Tiger and the Bear," a spy novel revolving around Russia just before the 2016 U.S. elections. Stunningly good blurbs including those by I.S. Berry, David McCloskey and John Sipher. philiplazar@protonmail.com
Proud to share that my espionage thriller, set mainly before the 2016 U.S. election, The Tiger and the Bear, has won the publisher's Sunny award: www.sunburypress.com/collections/.... If you're interested, please also check out my podcast interview on the book: www.buzzsprout.com/2424694/epis...
I have been reading spy novels for 50+ years. The best show good writing and reflect the issues of their times - Ambler, Greene and le Carre, obviously. I tried to do both with my book. I feared I might be overreacting to the threat from the right. Signs continue that I wasn't: x.com/BillClinton/...
Am I the only writer willing to write serious political/espionage thrillers reflecting the state of the U.S. and the world today?
Product placement in a novel should serve a literary purpose. In my book, The Tiger and the Bear, I had my character wear a Rolex because its military past loosened the tongue of an American he meets in a bar and its luxury status helped him with an oligarch-adjacent Russian.
NUMBER 1!
Vicki Weisfeld at crimefictionliver.com has The Tiger and the Bear as No. 1 on her Top 5 Books of 2025 -- "a political thriller in the style of John LeCarré ... you see all the pieces by the end, but Lazar gives one more twist ... "
crimefictionlover.com/2025/12/vick...
My book, which takes place mostly in the distant past of 2014 warns of one threat to the United States; I leave it to readers to decide whether that threat came true. This New York Times piece concerns another, related and current, threat to our democracy.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/o...
Is there any doubt in anyone's mind, at least after last night's Venezuela news, that the current U.S. administration's instincts run completely counter to the foundations of what it has meant to be America?
ack
“He’s being manipulated, in the way that a good case officer like Putin would manipulate this guy."
inews.co.uk/news/world/i...
I hope congressional Republicans and others who have no idea what the value of American soft power has been in the postwar period pay attention to this: www.rawstory.com/don-bacon-vo...
“Overall, the US was treating Ukraine as a partner by the end of 2024 and is now treating that country as an annoyance to be put in its place in the US quest for better relations with Russia….The US has changed sides.”
open.substack.com/pub/phillips...
Another example of what our president is doing to us and our leadership of the West: edition.cnn.com/2025/12/30/u...
While writing my published book, and working on the next one, I have striven to avoid going overboard in linking Moscow with the group now running the country. Other than implying a direct link where none has been proven, though, that sees less and less a danger.
And don't take your eyes off Southeast Asia, where Moscow is starting to try to sell arms in Vietnam, Burma and elsewhere. Not a major player yet, but ...
As a Soviet said to me one midnight in, I think Kiev (as it was then known), Russia will always be Russia. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov and Gorbachev, he said, would come and go, but Russia will always be Russia and not a Western liberal democracy.
