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A review by sackofbeans
The Honest Spy by Andreas Kollender
2.0
My decision for reading this one was a little convoluted. I went to go watch the roll-out of the Delta IV Heavy rocket which was soon to launch and carry the Parker Solar Probe to the sun. It was a big rocket.
I got to the neighboring launchpad a couple of hours early, as it made little sense to drive the long distance home and back, so I had some time to kill. But I did not bring a book with me. But I had my Kindle! And lots of ebooks I've downloaded over the years! Oh, wait, no, I had purchased a ton of ebooks but only downloaded... four. And there ain't Wi-Fi out at the launch pads.
The Honest Spy was the most interesting, un-read, fictional (I make sure I alternate between reading fiction and non-fiction so I don't get burned out on reading) book available on my Kindle at the time. And I'm not entirely for sure where it came from, I'm going to guess it was a Kindle First Reads or whatever, one of those optional free books you can download every month as an Amazon Prime Member. They let you pick from four books that all sound kind of "meh" so you go with the one that sounds the least dull, because hey, it's free.
So this is a review of a not-the-most-dull book a person can read when they have no other options because they didn't think ahead. Expect great things!
I'm going to spoil the twist ending revealed in the afterward: this book was based on a real person who actually existed. If I knew that from the beginning maybe I would have enjoyed it more, that's my own fault, but I try not to know too much about a book before going into it so I likely only glanced at the description.
But I kept finding myself removed from the story because of how silly cliche American Hollywood it felt at times.
The main character Fritz loves his home country of Germany. But oh man he hates Nazis and what they're doing to it! His boss calls and yells at him that he needs to leave his daughter behind in Africa so he can go be a spy and take down the Nazis. He works his way up through the Nazi ranks, finds some British Intelligence folks who don't want to pay him any attention, finds some AMERICAN YEAH BUDDY Intelligence folks who tell him he's the best there ever was and really appreciate him giving them all sorts of neat details like where the Nazis plan on attacking, what they're dong to the Jews, and where Hitler lives and works and plays. Fritz puts his life in danger regularly FOR FREE because Nazis suck.
Fritz also gets away with never joining the Nazi party or having a picture of Hitler on his office wall, which I would think a few other Nazis would make a bigger deal about but they only kind of tease Fritz about it.
My favorite... I don't know if it was an intentional joke, but idea carried out throughout the novel was Fritz refused to say "Heil Hitler", and instead would respond to anyone yelling it to him with his own defiant "Hi Hitler!"
I'd like to think the other characters that heard this felt a little confused and awkward. "Does he not know? Surely he must know it's heil not hi. After all, I'm not Hitler. Maybe he has a speech impediment? No, he can't, the Gestapo would have thrown him over a ledge by now if he did. He's high up with the Nazis so... maybe I just misheard him. Let me cough and shuffle my feet and walk away with my head down and pretend this whole thing never happened."
There's a big romantic subplot where Fritz is in love with a woman already married to a Nazi sympathizer. I wasn't sold on it.
It may be there was something lost in translation. Perhaps the details about the actual person were scarce enough that a lot of details were made up and so weren't convincing enough. For me, this was a book I had to force myself to get through, happily putting it back down every time I completed a single chapter so I could get on with my life.
I would like to point out that the character of Fritz stands in stark contrast to Howard W. Campbell, Jr, the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, one of my all-time favorite books. Where Mr. Campbell was a spy who mastered the appearance of being a Nazi so much he fooled even himself, Fritz manages to finds ways to stay true to himself and his beliefs. The latter may have actually happened, but the former was a lot more fun to read.
If anything, The Honest Spy has me aware of and wanting to read a biography on the actual Fritz the person.
I got to the neighboring launchpad a couple of hours early, as it made little sense to drive the long distance home and back, so I had some time to kill. But I did not bring a book with me. But I had my Kindle! And lots of ebooks I've downloaded over the years! Oh, wait, no, I had purchased a ton of ebooks but only downloaded... four. And there ain't Wi-Fi out at the launch pads.
The Honest Spy was the most interesting, un-read, fictional (I make sure I alternate between reading fiction and non-fiction so I don't get burned out on reading) book available on my Kindle at the time. And I'm not entirely for sure where it came from, I'm going to guess it was a Kindle First Reads or whatever, one of those optional free books you can download every month as an Amazon Prime Member. They let you pick from four books that all sound kind of "meh" so you go with the one that sounds the least dull, because hey, it's free.
So this is a review of a not-the-most-dull book a person can read when they have no other options because they didn't think ahead. Expect great things!
I'm going to spoil the twist ending revealed in the afterward: this book was based on a real person who actually existed. If I knew that from the beginning maybe I would have enjoyed it more, that's my own fault, but I try not to know too much about a book before going into it so I likely only glanced at the description.
But I kept finding myself removed from the story because of how silly cliche American Hollywood it felt at times.
The main character Fritz loves his home country of Germany. But oh man he hates Nazis and what they're doing to it! His boss calls and yells at him that he needs to leave his daughter behind in Africa so he can go be a spy and take down the Nazis. He works his way up through the Nazi ranks, finds some British Intelligence folks who don't want to pay him any attention, finds some AMERICAN YEAH BUDDY Intelligence folks who tell him he's the best there ever was and really appreciate him giving them all sorts of neat details like where the Nazis plan on attacking, what they're dong to the Jews, and where Hitler lives and works and plays. Fritz puts his life in danger regularly FOR FREE because Nazis suck.
Fritz also gets away with never joining the Nazi party or having a picture of Hitler on his office wall, which I would think a few other Nazis would make a bigger deal about but they only kind of tease Fritz about it.
My favorite... I don't know if it was an intentional joke, but idea carried out throughout the novel was Fritz refused to say "Heil Hitler", and instead would respond to anyone yelling it to him with his own defiant "Hi Hitler!"
I'd like to think the other characters that heard this felt a little confused and awkward. "Does he not know? Surely he must know it's heil not hi. After all, I'm not Hitler. Maybe he has a speech impediment? No, he can't, the Gestapo would have thrown him over a ledge by now if he did. He's high up with the Nazis so... maybe I just misheard him. Let me cough and shuffle my feet and walk away with my head down and pretend this whole thing never happened."
There's a big romantic subplot where Fritz is in love with a woman already married to a Nazi sympathizer. I wasn't sold on it.
It may be there was something lost in translation. Perhaps the details about the actual person were scarce enough that a lot of details were made up and so weren't convincing enough. For me, this was a book I had to force myself to get through, happily putting it back down every time I completed a single chapter so I could get on with my life.
I would like to point out that the character of Fritz stands in stark contrast to Howard W. Campbell, Jr, the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, one of my all-time favorite books. Where Mr. Campbell was a spy who mastered the appearance of being a Nazi so much he fooled even himself, Fritz manages to finds ways to stay true to himself and his beliefs. The latter may have actually happened, but the former was a lot more fun to read.
If anything, The Honest Spy has me aware of and wanting to read a biography on the actual Fritz the person.