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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
This book was fine. I want to read on a little bit just because his personal life completely blew up right there at the end and I'm a little curious where that will go, but I don't think I actually will read more. There are other spy novels I enjoy the action much more and I think this one will fall on the side for me.
Great story, good barely put it down.
Milo Weaver was a "tourist" for the CIA, a blackops agent last travelling under the identity Charles Alexander. The job became unbearable for him and six years back he quit, and took a desk job analyzing information for the agency.
He is now married with a daughter, and a librarian wife. He has spent a good deal of his time lately tracking an assassin known as The Tiger, and when he finally tracks him down, is very surprised at what he finds. He is asked to do some fieldwork again, and while resistant, gives in to help a good friend out of a jam. But this new work leads to discoveries about old cases and he ends up looking for help from those he never thought he'd ask.
Things move along quickly here with never a dull moment, and I got very caught up in the plot.
I think this would make a great action movie, and I understand that George Clooney has already taken an option out on it.
Milo Weaver was a "tourist" for the CIA, a blackops agent last travelling under the identity Charles Alexander. The job became unbearable for him and six years back he quit, and took a desk job analyzing information for the agency.
He is now married with a daughter, and a librarian wife. He has spent a good deal of his time lately tracking an assassin known as The Tiger, and when he finally tracks him down, is very surprised at what he finds. He is asked to do some fieldwork again, and while resistant, gives in to help a good friend out of a jam. But this new work leads to discoveries about old cases and he ends up looking for help from those he never thought he'd ask.
Things move along quickly here with never a dull moment, and I got very caught up in the plot.
I think this would make a great action movie, and I understand that George Clooney has already taken an option out on it.
adventurous
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very spyish. The protagonist is not a very interesting character.
I wasn't really in the mood for this book, so it took me a little longer than usual to get into it. Howver, I quite enjoyed it in the end. It's a spy story with the usual twists and turns and mysteries and deception. Probably good for a holiday beach read :)
A fantastic genre spy thriller. On par with the greats: LeCarre, Greene, & Littell.
I'm not sure why I still bother to read any modern espionage books -- they never seem rise above decent beach reads (like Dead Spy Running), and all-to-often wind up being miserable duds (like A Most Wanted Man). This falls somewhere in my ambivalent middle, a serviceable, but ultimately disposable tale of yet another weary warrior in the game of shadows. Here, the spy is Milo, whom we meet in an opening section set in pre-9/11 Europe, where he works as a "tourist" (ie. black ops agent) for the CIA. Faced with the meaningless life of the post-Cold War, pre-War on Terror spy, he flirts with suicide. It's a bit of a shock then, when the next section opens some six years later with him as a desk jockey in the CIA's Manhattan office, where he collates reports from current "tourists" into intelligence. More impressively, he seems to have forged a new life as husband and father, with the obligatory Park Slope home.
The complicated plot defies summary, but involves a legendary hit man Milo has been tracking for years, bureaucratic battles between the CIA and Homeland Security, a dead agent or two in Europe, missing millions, Chinese interest in African oil, a Russian pedophile, another apparently benevolent Russian, a vacation to Disneyland, Milo's dead revolutionary mother, plenty of double-crossing, and a possible mole at the CIA. Steinhauer does a reasonably good job of keeping all these balls in the air, although the story slips inexorably toward the rather tired "wanted by his own people" plot. And on it slogs through the familiar spy tropes: Whom can Milo trust? Whose identities are real, and whose are false? Who's behind it all and why?
To the author's credit, he doesn't dumb down the material, and relies on the reader's ability to keep track of the rival interests of a decent-sized cast, many of whom are sporting multiple aliases. Alas, the most crucial secret of all, the one secret that is meant to be the big reveal at the end, is going to be glaringly obvious to most readers who are paying attention. There's a moment in the first third of the book that should trigger a question in the reader along the lines of "Wait a minute, how did he learn to ____?" The only answer that makes sense is the one that's revealed at the end, so for me, the payoff falls kind of flat -- especially if we're meant to believe that no one else in the story ever stopped to ask that question.
So, it's not a bad book, but neither is it a good one. There are some nice action set pieces, as well as some nice dialogue scenes, and the locations are all well described. However, none of the characters move beyond being types, and the entire enterprise lacks life. I've heard this may be turned into a film at some point, and I suspect that if done right, this might be one of those rare cases where the film is better than the book, as the right directors and actors might be able to inject a note of originality into this lukewarm tale.
The complicated plot defies summary, but involves a legendary hit man Milo has been tracking for years, bureaucratic battles between the CIA and Homeland Security, a dead agent or two in Europe, missing millions, Chinese interest in African oil, a Russian pedophile, another apparently benevolent Russian, a vacation to Disneyland, Milo's dead revolutionary mother, plenty of double-crossing, and a possible mole at the CIA. Steinhauer does a reasonably good job of keeping all these balls in the air, although the story slips inexorably toward the rather tired "wanted by his own people" plot. And on it slogs through the familiar spy tropes: Whom can Milo trust? Whose identities are real, and whose are false? Who's behind it all and why?
To the author's credit, he doesn't dumb down the material, and relies on the reader's ability to keep track of the rival interests of a decent-sized cast, many of whom are sporting multiple aliases. Alas, the most crucial secret of all, the one secret that is meant to be the big reveal at the end, is going to be glaringly obvious to most readers who are paying attention. There's a moment in the first third of the book that should trigger a question in the reader along the lines of "Wait a minute, how did he learn to ____?" The only answer that makes sense is the one that's revealed at the end, so for me, the payoff falls kind of flat -- especially if we're meant to believe that no one else in the story ever stopped to ask that question.
So, it's not a bad book, but neither is it a good one. There are some nice action set pieces, as well as some nice dialogue scenes, and the locations are all well described. However, none of the characters move beyond being types, and the entire enterprise lacks life. I've heard this may be turned into a film at some point, and I suspect that if done right, this might be one of those rare cases where the film is better than the book, as the right directors and actors might be able to inject a note of originality into this lukewarm tale.
I think this book made me realize that I don't really care for political thrillers. It's not a bad book, really (although there was too much jargon at the beginning; that kind of turned me off); it's just that I couldn't care about anything, including the characters. And if I don't care by page 70, I would rather spend my time reading books that pull me in, either with plot or character.
I used to love old Cold War spy novels. This is apparently the new incarnation -- post 9/11, with Homeland Security in the spotlight. I have no idea how this author from Budapest knows so much about the way the US intelligence community works, but he's good! If you like spy novels, you'll like it!