Fresh, not the usual spy story
921845
This was a great Spy novel--a nice change of pace from the normal.  Great character development, grabbbed your interest from the start and hung on.  Intrigue, plot twists and turns, I'll look for this author agan.  Quick read, if you like spy novels and mysteries, you'll enjoy this book.
2263164
Although it is not a perfect analogy (by their very natures, analogies are rarely perfect), during the Cold War, East German was to the Soviet Union what England was to the United States:  a close ally but also clearly the lesser partner in the relationship.  Although the smaller country, in fiction at least, England did much better with spies, producing the biggest of them all, James Bond.  On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the KGB took most of the spotlight, but East Germany's Stasi did have its moments.  Kristie Macrakis's book, Seduced by Secrets, gives some insights into this organization.

Seduced by Secrets is divided into two roughly equal halves.  The first part deals with human intelligence, those spies and bureaucrats that operated within Stasi, or more formally, the East German Ministry of State Security.  We get tales of various defectors and moles and the methods Stasi used to both recruit agents and weed out those working for the West.  This concludes in a chapter dealing with East German attempts to steal Western computer technology and highlights the inherent flaws in a nation that seems to principally thrive on what it can take from other, more prosperous countries.

The second part of the book discusses spy-tech, where once again, the East Germans typically lagged behind their Western counterparts (nor were they alone among the Communist countries, a big reason that the Cold War ended as it did).  For those most familiar with spy technology from what we pick up from movies, this section provides a glimpse in reality versus fiction.  Personally, I found most interesting a chapter on the use of invisible inks; this was far more sophisticated than the inks devised in junior chemistry sets and the methods for producing the inks, detecting them and restoring them to visibility were often so secretive that even today, they aren't known.  Considering how rarely you'd see Bond or his foes using these inks, you'd never realize how important they were in spydom.  Other chapters describe more well-known spy devices such as cameras, radios and secret containers.

Macrakis's writing is informative and reasonably entertaining.  Her style, while quite readable, is occasionally flawed with some slow passages and a tendency to repeat herself a bit.  The problems, however, don't overcome the essential strength of her book, which is good for both those interested in spy fiction or Cold War history; if you fit into either of these categories, this will be a worthwhile book to pick up.
1115995
The spy thriller plot where an author of action novels gets drawn into real espionage isn't particularly original, but it's elevated by interesting characters and some 90's tv writing satire. I can easily see this becoming a movie.
I love the way the plot wraps up perfectly in the big Hollywood-style climax. Not super realistic, but very satisfying.
2750986
I enjoyed this novel. I haven't read a decent military spy thriller in a while and this definitely was a change of pace for me. One thing that stood out to me as I read the book was the amazing amount of research that the author must have put into the work in an effort to make it as authentic as possible. The author clearly read up on middle eastern culture and that of fundamentalist Jihadist groups in order to present a realistic, gritty novel inspired by real world events. I thought I was familiar with this part of the world, at least as more than the common lay person, but the author proved me wrong. Not only does the author have a great handle on the setting the story is placed in but he also has a great handle on weapons, tactics and day to day life in the Islamic State. His thorough grasp on his setting makes it easy to slide into the world he has created which is certainly a plus. It is also cool how he manages to weave contemporary events into his story, while still creating a unique tale of his own.

Where the story does fall a little flat is in the characterization. In general, the characters are fairly one dimensional and a tad bland. We are told that the three men sent undercover in the Islamic state are the best at what they do, but very little happens on page to showcase this. I would have preferred to see the three of them perform more Selous Scout activity, actually showing more detecting, deceiving, disrupting, delaying and destroying. We see the main character carrying out a bit of low level espionage, commit a high level assassination and rescue, but very little is shown of him or his other two spies actually disrupting and sabotaging the Islamic state from within. That would have been fun to read. Overall, though I still enjoyed the novel, just wish the characterization was stronger and that it was a bit longer, although it does move at a fairly brisk pace. Bring on the sequel!
4248738
I have seen these books in bookstores for quite some time. When I finally read the first book, 'The Recruit' it was not what I expected, but I was not disappointed. I'm not a fan of spy adventures as a rule, but I do enjoy Youth Fiction and this had all the elements of a book that children and young people will enjoy. This is the kind of book that boys who are reluctant readers (cliche, I know), will enjoy, but it's also a book that a teacher won't have qualms about recommending to students. It's well written, the characterisation is excellent and the plot lines are well thought out.
What I particularly liked was the way the child and teenage characters are portrayed. They're gritty and at times unsympathetic, but they are real teenagers, and I say this as someone who teaches high school English. Some adults/parents may not like this darker aspect but I thought it was very refreshing to see a YA author who didn't sugar coat their characters.
Another good thing about this series is there are so many books, so once you've started reading, or your child/student has and they come back wanting more you can point to a whole shelf of them.
Lastly, the spy adventure aspect. It wasn't as James Bond as I had expected, which is due to my own naivete. This is a far more realistic look at what intelligence agencies do (or at least it seems more believable).
The Recruit is a great start to an impressive and original series, which I would highly recommend to anyone who likes engaging characters, intelligent plots, and good quality writing. If nothing else read it for a clear-eyed portrayal of adolescents.
2911088
"The Bourne Identity," a fine bit of spy-thriller escapism loosely based on a 1980 best-seller by Robert Ludlum, opens with an unconscious Matt Damon, two bullets in his back, being plucked out of some rough waters off the coast of Marseilles by a fishing boat. It turns out he has no idea who he is - or what a small capsule carrying a Swiss bank-account number was doing implanted in his butt.
However, his body remembers. Making his way to Zurich to check out his only clue, he discovers he's a multilingual martial-arts expert. Which means ... what? The safety-deposit box he finds only confuses things. In it are a handful of passports under different names, a pile of money in various currencies and a gun.
Meanwhile, we learn that Bourne is some kind of CIA operative from an off-the-books mission gone awry. His boss (Chris Cooper, the rigid neighbor from "American Beauty") now wants him dead. So the chase begins, with Bourne's only help coming from a young German woman named Maria (Franka Potente). She's got a car and a venturesome spirit, but the more they find out about his former self, the less either of them likes it.
The movie has all those welcome spy-movie accoutrements: a train speeding through a snow-covered tunnel, some sinewy cat-and-mouse games in Paris, topped off by an A-plus car chase, even a chilling spy vs. spy confrontation in the French countryside with an agent known as the Professor ("Croupier's" Clive Owen).
That said, the film's greatest asset is how much it's not just another connect-the-dots, spy-on-the-run picture. Director Doug Liman, best known for "Swingers," not only treats his story with intelligence, but he makes some refreshingly off-beat choices. For one, he casts lovely Julia Stiles as a Paris go-fer for the CIA. In a more conventional movie, she would've played Potente's role.
Damon isn't a typical hero either. His boyishness brings a different slant to the role. One of the movie's more winning aspects is watching Damon watch himself as he discovers all the things he somehow knows how to do (at times, it suggests Tobey Maguire's wonder when he first tries out his powers in "Spider-Man"). In one amusing scene at a diner, within five minutes of being seated, Damon tells Potente that the waitress is left-handed; the guy at the counter may be fat but he knows how to handle himself; and the likeliest place to find a gun, if needed, is in the glove compartment of the truck outside. Not only doesn't he know how he knows these things; he can't imagine why he would know them.
Potente, who first turned critics' heads in the German film, "Run Lola Run," is becoming an intriguing presence in American movies. She suggests Lili Taylor with a sexier edge, yet she has a grounded kind of beauty that makes her credible. As a bonus, she brings a European quality to her role that somehow seeps into the rest of Liman's film.
She's not precisely what we expect. Neither is Damon. Neither is "The Bourne Identity."
1244878
This book was a scifi spy thriller that did not disappoint.  Plenty of spy, plenty of scifi, plenty of thrill through the end.  The plot takes a wonderful set of twists and turns through many different levels from interpersonal to galactic politics.  The setting and backdrop are almost like characters all on their own, as you would expect with a spy thriller set in an unfamiliar environment.  With the wide cast of characters, some are less developed than others.  Perhaps that is intended to keep mystery around some of their motives, but it left a potentially very interesting character or two seeming one or two dimensional.  All in all, an entertaining read.
20303
I'm partial to historical novels, especially those set in the WW2 era, so I was receptive to Kanon's plot. His style effectively guides this spy thriller through its various twists. But it's much more than one man's complicated life of espionage in post-war Berlin. It is a rich historical narrative that touches on provocative moral and political issues.
480644
It was refreshing to read a spy story in which the 'hero' ages and performs very well in spite of being a normal, middle-aged fellow.  I liked to read of someone who might be very like you, yourself, or your neighbor or a friend, instead of being a young invincible stud who romances every woman that he runs across.  No, this "spy with a clean face" is an ordinary Joe who is true to his wife and does his regular job with panache.  At the same time he undertakes to do special missions for his country and is also able to fulfill his obligation without fanfare.  It's enough to renew one's faith in the common man, in doing something because it is right, in being a good citizen.  if you're wanting lots of action, fights, hot sex scenes, skip this one.  If you want a good, relaxing read that also leaves you feeling good about your fellow man, you'll like this book.
2535701
I enjoyed this story. It combines history, intrigue, spies, a bit of European travelogue, and a cast of uniquely conceived characters. Think "Grumpy Old Men" and "
Reds" meet The Monuments Men." Highly recommended.
3341332
While I'm not an avid reader of detective fiction, I read it occasionally. I felt that this book was quite a bit different from other books of this genre that I've read recently. This book was more about the characters than the mystery. It wasn't about setting up puzzles for the reader to try to solve, but about seeing how the case affected the characters and also following the characters in their lives. I fear I'm making it sound boring, but it was actually refreshing and fun and compelling. I loved that the main detective was not a perfect person. I wouldn't say she was fully fleshed out, but she came across as multidimensional and complex. It seemed as though this was possibly written to be the first in a series, so that we'd get to know the layers of the main characters over time. I didn't feel as though anything were missing so much as I'd be interested to read more books involving these characters.
907560
This isn't a blow-it-up, car-chase kind of action book. It's a complex tale of spies and intrigue, told from many angles. It's very satisfying and I believe it will become a standard by which other such novels will be judged. Really excellent.
1638009
Colin Harrison writes intelligent thrillers w/o a serial hero, maybe except New York and the wonders of globalization.
I liked the Havana Room a lot, and the Finder has the additional attraction of a China connection. The plot doesn't need to be summarized again, that has been done by Amazon and other reviewers.
CH has the ability to tell a not so unusual story in a fresh and surprising way. He stays away from the cliches and the stereotypes that make me drop many thrillers on similar subjects lost in boredom.
I deduct a star because I am not 100% convinced that the plot driver here would work in real life: the office cleaning company as industrial spy agent who feeds investors half around the world with the info that they need to manipulate the share prices of small startup companies in Wall Street. Well, I don't know. Also, there are some minor blunders about things Chinese, eg his handling of names.
But he hits the right tone for me and his protagonists make sense. Even the Chinese ones, though Li Jin's brother bothered me a bit. He looked too simplistic at first glance (the supersmart but overexposed criminal stock manipulator from a formerly poor family), but then, if you look at the bios of similar real life men and women, they are like that apparently.
And the underworld is remarkably diversified. We also meet the more conventional business models of the Mafia and the Mexican drugring.
The suspense is fueled by more than one line of uncertainty: what is happening to Jin? who is her hero Ray, really? which of the different ethnic gangs is the most evil? possibly the local rich boy?
766420
Interesting international spy intrigue. Liked it, but it takes a few leaps of faith to follow the story line. Recommended for a serious flight of fancy.into the world of sinister competing interests among agencies and countries. The protagonist is the fall guy.
3819942
I love Jack Reacher (Lee Child), Alex Hawke (Ted Bell), Mitch Rapp (Vince Flynn), Sean Dillon (Jack Higgins) and other spies with a mind of their own. And I have just found another one in Tim Tigner's Kyle Achilles. Achilles is not your classic spy recruited out of a military Special Ops group. He is a former Olympic biathlete-turned-free-climber, relying on athletic instincts rather than military training. So he follows orders out of respect, not chain-of-command. And he definitely does not respect his new bosses at the CIA, seeing them as politicians, not men who served their country on a battlefield.

Achilles' current assignment is to capture/kill the elusive Ivan the Ghost, a Russian agent who leaves no trail and has never been identified. All Achilles knows is that Ivan's target is a candidate running for the office of Mayor of London. Achilles picks up Ivan's trail in London and follows it to a showdown in the rarefied atmosphere of Monte Carlo, where he is partnered with newbie agent Jo Monfort, who has an unorthodox pedigree of her own.

The plot grabs you from the start and, being a novella, the action is fast. I could not put this book down and I am signing up for more missions with agent Achilles (hopefully joined by Jo). Great read!
1624991
This is the best spy novel I have read in quite some time.  There is an interesting mix of characters (don't listen to that other reviewer who said there are too many).  The story line is intriguing, and you will spend a lot of time wondering: "What the heck is going on here?"  I enjoyed the mix of history and fiction, and I especially enjoyed the thought-provoking side of this book.  It leaves you wondering just how much of this might actually have happened.  That element makes this more than just a spy novel.  It makes you think about how much the governments of the world (including ours) spin the news to get us to believe as they wish.

And be warned, there's bad language, sex, sadistic murders, regular murders, etc. in this book.  It's a spy novel...stay out of the kitchen if you don't like this kind of heat.
582022
American espionage novels tend to be about the hardware, British ones about the human factor. This one's more British. Dryden seems headed down the road of Le Carre and Deighton as he weaves  a fine tale,  the second involving Finn and Anna, he from MI-6, she from the KGB.

Finn is dead now, murdered by the KGB. Anna, his widow and mother of his child, has fled Russia and lives incognito in the south of France.

Incognito, that is, until freelancer Logan Halloran, once one of the CIA's finest but fired for someone else's mistake, gets a line on her - one he sells to several high bidders.

Anna must accept, for herself and her toddler son, the protection of Burt Miller, a wealthy private contractor for the CIA - the kind doing more and more of the agency's secret work.

What Miller wants is a secret he's not even sure Anna has - the identity of Finn's prize Russian source Mikhail, whom Finn destroyed his own career to protect, a top official close to Putin. Everyone wants Mikhail - the Americans for his information, the British to use as a trading chip for Finn's assassin and the Russians to kill him as a traitor. Thus they all want Anna and will apply any amount of pressure to get her to talk.

Dryden does an elegant job plotting as Anna threads the needle - deciding just how much to tell Miller, whether to give up Mikhail and how, how to go along with Miller enough to keep herself and her son safe, and meanwhile maintaining her own independence. Some of the best scenes are those in which she shakes Miller's experienced watchers just long enough to make unobserved contacts.

The cast of characters includes Finn's former boss Adrian, who had cast him out of MI-6; Anna's onetime lover Vladimir, still with the KGB;  the prized source Mikhail; the intriguing Halloran; and a mysterious, skillful assassin named Lars. Dryden gives everyone ulterior motives, so as the story winds on you have no idea who's doublecrossing whom because they all might be. It comes to a head in Washington on Obama's Inauguration Day.

Like the great espionage writers, Dryden makes it ultimately about the characters, navigating life wondering whom to trust when they can't trust anyone, and wondering how to live with choices made and things done in loyalty to states often undeserving of it.