My experience with historical fiction books is that it can either tell a great character driven story paralleling actual historical events, or it can be a fun history retelling with the author taking liberties that bend historical events to something almost completely unrecognizable.  In my opinion, Stalin’s Door wasn’t just a wonderful middle ground, it was perfect.  I’m not fully versed on much of Russia’s history, but the author obviously put an immense amount of effort into research for this book—I couldn’t say with absolute certainty if the author took any liberties with the history, and that may be one of the most chilling aspects of this book.  The way it’s written—the author put me in the room with the characters.  The paranoia style suspense kept me on edge as the main character’s circumstances progressed and intertwined.  I could feel the cold fear that they were facing, as well as the warmth that the characters would show toward one another.  I f...