Books: The Spy Defined

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THE CASE OF RICHARD SORGE by F. W. Deakin and G. R. Storry. 373 pages. Harper & Row. $6.

Spies who become famous usually find it fatal. Richard Sorge, the shadowy Soviet mastermind of one of the most daring and successful espionage rings in history, was no exception. Although Russia made him a Hero of the Soviet Union, named a Moscow street and a tanker in his honor, and only last year issued a commemorative stamp (4 kopeks) bearing his likeness, Sorge was not around to take bows. The Japanese hanged him in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison on Nov. 7, 1944.

One popular novel and at least eight nonfiction works have been written about the spy ring that Sorge operated in Japan between 1933 and 1941. This book, however, is the definitive one. Oxford Dons Deakin and Storry, who spent three years interviewing officials and studying a massive file of court transcripts and official documents, turned out a sound, scholarly underpinning for the story of Sorge's espionage activities.

Sorge's major achievements were nothing short of remarkable. He had long been a top Red Army agent when he turned up in Tokyo as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung. He got so cozy with staffers in the German embassy that he was even permitted to edit the office newsletter. Before the Japanese got on to him, Sorge had succeeded in warning Moscow in advance of many of Hitler's plans, told his superiors of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and gave them 38 days' advance notice of Hitler's invasion of Russia.

Deakin and Storry have done an admirable job in fitting together the bits and pieces in the Sorge case, and in doing so provide an engrossing study of the tedious side of spying. Spy-thriller fans should be warned, however, that the book is too densely packed with scholarly detail to be fast-moving and exciting; it bristles not with action but with footnotes.