Ace Atkins

It's 1985, what will soon become known at "The Year of the Spy, " and fourteen-year-old Peter Bennett is convinced his mom's new boyfriend is a Russian agent. "Gary" isn't in the phone book, has an unidentifiable European accent, and keeps a gun in the glove box of his convertible Porsche. Peter thinks Gary only wants to get close to his mom because she works at Scientific Atlanta, a lab with big government contracts.
But who is going to believe him? He's just a kid into BMX and MTV. But after another woman who works at the lab is killed, Peter recruits an unlikely pair of allies - a has-been pulp writer named Dennis Hotchner and his drag performer buddy and heavy, Jackie Demure. Both soon become the target of an unhinged Russian hitman (is it Gary? Maybe!) with a serious Phil Collins obsession. Meanwhile, Sylvia Weaver, a young, Black FBI agent, investigates Scientific Atlanta in the wake of the employee's murder and discovers a nest of Russian spies.
Little does she know her investigation is being thwarted by a seriously compromised colleague in Washington, D. C., who is in league with a lovesick, hypochondriac KGB defector who is playing both sides of the Cold War to his benefit. As Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev prepare for a historic nuclear summit in Geneva, what happens in Atlanta might change the course of the Cold War, the 20th Century, and Peter Bennett's freshman year of high school.