A review by peter__b
The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia by Bryan Denson

2.0

"Tedious" is probably the best word to describe this book. I was never really engaged with what was happening and often found myself daydreaming through parts. The biggest cause of this tedium was the extraordinary amounts of "filler" that was used to try to flesh out the story. All it usually did was make me frustrated that it took over an hour to get to an ultimately benign point. There was even a whole, long-winded section that could be summed up as "spying is bad, mkay?".

The story moved along unbearably slowly, with unnecessary tangents about the lives of the people involved in catching the "spies". I use the term "spies" very loosely, since the book made them sound as complete amateurs, which I find hard to believe. I suspect it's more the case that the book left out pertinent information about how things actually happened.

I didn't "hate" the book, since there was nothing technically bad about it. The was a lot of detail that some people will definitely find interesting along with some interesting insights into how the espionage world works. Ultimately, the lesson I learned is that an interesting subtitle does not lead to an interesting book.