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joestewart's review
3.0
Writing was decent but not excellent, story was decent, but the characters were unidimensional.
aburnss's review
3.0
I liked the story of this book, but the writing style often pulled me out of the moment. I also was confused with keeping all of the characters and terminology straight.
kelly_lyn_yt's review
3.0
the bad guys were confusing to keep separate. they were similar in characteristics. the two different plot lines didn't mesh well.
burnman325's review
4.0
I was not a big spy fan, this was a recommendation based on other things I have read. The book starts out a little slow and confusing. There are many names and groups and it is hard to keep them straight. The second half of the book pulls all the loose ends together nicely.
brettt's review against another edition
3.0
Spy novelist Matthew Dunn, if his publisher's bio is to be believed, comes by his espio-knowledge the old-fashioned way, by having worked for the British MI6 intelligence agency. In Slingshot, his third "Spycatcher" novel, he continues to chronicle the exploits of Will Cochrane, an operative with a special joint MI6-CIA task force that handles jobs other agencies either can't touch or don't want to acknowledge need doing.
Though the Cold War may be over, the behind-the-scene game of spy vs. spy continues. A Russian national wishes to defect in Poland -- although handled by Polish intelligence, word is that unknown operatives want the defection stopped, so Will and his team are called in to shepherd the operation. But it goes bloodily wrong. Digging into the operation, Will learns that Russian intelligence wasn't behind the raid, and that a conspiracy with roots in the chaos following the breakup of the Soviet Union has plans that could bring death to millions. He and his team must track the conspirators while battling possible infiltration of their own ranks, while Will himself faces the reality that the man behind it all knows how to strike at him personally.
Over the course of the three books, Dunn has polished his narrative style and sharpened his gift for writing a high-tension action scene. Slingshot flows much better than the earlier two novels, although it still has to pause and stop for a discourse on character motivation now and again instead of weaving that information into the story itself. The resulting stop-and-start pattern is all the more frustrating because the way Dunn builds the character of a top assassin is integrated into the narrative, meaning he knows how but sometimes chooses the shorter route. Despite this and despite a more tangled cast of characters than he really needs, Dunn puts together a good spy yarn that doesn't waste a reader's time.
Original available here.
Though the Cold War may be over, the behind-the-scene game of spy vs. spy continues. A Russian national wishes to defect in Poland -- although handled by Polish intelligence, word is that unknown operatives want the defection stopped, so Will and his team are called in to shepherd the operation. But it goes bloodily wrong. Digging into the operation, Will learns that Russian intelligence wasn't behind the raid, and that a conspiracy with roots in the chaos following the breakup of the Soviet Union has plans that could bring death to millions. He and his team must track the conspirators while battling possible infiltration of their own ranks, while Will himself faces the reality that the man behind it all knows how to strike at him personally.
Over the course of the three books, Dunn has polished his narrative style and sharpened his gift for writing a high-tension action scene. Slingshot flows much better than the earlier two novels, although it still has to pause and stop for a discourse on character motivation now and again instead of weaving that information into the story itself. The resulting stop-and-start pattern is all the more frustrating because the way Dunn builds the character of a top assassin is integrated into the narrative, meaning he knows how but sometimes chooses the shorter route. Despite this and despite a more tangled cast of characters than he really needs, Dunn puts together a good spy yarn that doesn't waste a reader's time.
Original available here.
borisfeldman's review against another edition
4.0
A superb spy thriller. Perfect vacation read: impossible to put down.
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