Alfred Coppel's last novel, Wars and Winters, is to post-Cold War Germany what Graham Greene's classic The Third Man was to post-World War II Europe, said the Flint Journal. His latest, The Eighth Day of the Week, does the same for a harrowing post-Boris Yeltsin era in Russia when the hardliners are conspiring to move back into total power, and using the United States and its vulnerability as a catspaw.