Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book has many merits but also distinct limitations. All in all, it is worth reading and I recommend it,, albeit with reservations. Its merits are a strong and convincing set up: the real-world revival of Russia as a government-led mob force. The Western spy agencies and Haliburton-type firms are weaving their many wiles to locate a key mole who is close to Putin and turn him. He is known only to our heroine, an ex-Russian spy whose British spy husband was offed and is in hiding. When her location is discovered it's away to the US and grillings, bluffs and background game-playing by unpleasant Brit spylord and the CIA with checkbook and threats aplenty. Anna, the heroine, is resourceful and smart and makes for a sympathetic character as she tries to protect her infant son from the bullying and blackmail and play her card as to who "Mikhail" is - the mole. The plot is suitably devious and the writing smooth.
The weakness of the book is that Anna is really the only character as contrasted with stereotype or cipher. Mikhail appears for just a few pages (!!!) and we never get to hear him, understand him or see him as real. Central characters are buffoon exaggerations, especially the over the top imitation of a rich Texan cowboy who is the motivator of the entire plot, the potentially interesting imitation of a Le Carre Brit mastermind with the emotions of a hyena, and the lost and despondent field agent betrayed and forlorn and brought in mainly for the obligatory and dull sex routine. There's no life or dimensionality in the characters, except for Anna.
The author has a strong reputation as a journalist/observer and the book has the strengths of, say, The Economist magazine's articulation, clarity and measured pacing. It lacks, though, color and "voice." It doesn't have drive and that vividness of scene and emotion that raises the best political/spy thrillers above the mechanics of the plot.
I give this four stars for its merits in exposition. It is certainly well done within its limits. I would rate it two stars for its pedestrian characterization. Parts of it are strongly reminiscent of Le Carre's Russia House - the thrust and parrying of the genteel interrogations and the double dealing and cynical betrayals, especially of Anna's agent husband that caused his death. That is the subject of the author's first book, which got excellent reviews. But there's a difference between a well-told story, which this is, and the richness of Le Carre (or the great Len Deighton).
If I were to give this novel to a friend, it would be with a statement like "Try this, you may like it" not "This is something you really have to read."
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