Last year I read Austin Grossman's Crooked, a novel reimagining the Cold War as not merely a diplomatic, economic, and - by way of proxy wars - military conflict but as an occult conflict in which the Soviet Union has raced far ahead of the United States, and Richard Nixon is the last of the sorcerer-presidents. It blends alternate history with political thriller, and layers onto this shades of Lovecraftian horror, Faustian bargains, Cold War-era espionage and intrigue, and suspense. (There will be spoilers.)
