Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue Books - Page 6

The Confessor

Daniel Silva

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 103 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Forgive us our trespasses.... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"The Confessor", part of the Holocaust trilogy featuring Israeli spy Gabriel Allon once again delivers excitement, intrigue, human drama, and superb historical interest. The fictional Pope of "The Confessor" is the target of a plot within the Vatican intended to silence him because of his desire to confess the sins of the Church during the Holocaust. His impassioned words brought me to tears.

Need An Assassin? Here's My Card 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Ben Stern is a Jewish scholar living and working in Munich. On sabbatical, he is murdered while working on a book. With his death, the manuscript is nowhere to be found and nobody seems to know what it was about. Gabriel Allon is called upon to investigate. As the story progresses, Gabriel must uncover a conspiracy in the Curia, learnthe truth about Nazi collaborators, save a new pope's life, and get an elusive assassin known as the Leopard.

THE CONFESSOR is a first-rate espionage thriller complete with convoluted plot, fast action, beautiful woman, and engaging characters. The issue of Vatican inaction during the Holocaust and the opening of papal archives from that period is a real one and provides an interesting backdrop to Silva's story.

My main complaint about this book, and the reason I didn't give it five stars, involves the ending. As THE CONFESSOR comes to a close, everything is tied up neatly except that the Leopard has gotten away. That's fine if you're going to follow it up elsewhere, such as keep him for another book. Instead, the author tacks on a two-page final chapter (what amounts to a very brief epilogue), in which he disposes of the Leopard without any fanfare whatever. It's as if Silva ran out of paper. It reads as though the character, who was reputedly so elusive that there were no pictures of him and his identity was a mystery, handed out cards with his name, address, phone number, and ID picture on them as he fled the scene near the end of the story.

Aside from what struck me as a letdown at the very end, I thought THE CONFESSOR was a fine book. It's not Silva's first story to feature Allon, so I'll go back and begin at the start, but I will definitely be reading more of this guy's work. I recommend this one.

Editorial Review:

In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts down his brushes, and leaves immediately. And at the Vatican, the new pope vows to uncover the truth about the church's response to the Holocaust-while a powerful cardinal plots his next move.

Now, as Allon follows a trail of secrets and unthinkable deeds, the lives of millions are changed forever-and the life of one man becomes expendable...

Spook Country

William Gibson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 156 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Gotta get this off my chest 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I've been reading William Gibson since he was first hailed as the Cyberpunk messiah back in the late Eighties. At the risk of being savaged for this review, all these years later, I am still asking myself why this guy is so popular as an author and why I keep falling for the marketing hoopla and buying his books. He is not a bad author but he is certainly not a great one either. Spook country isn't any better than previous novels, nor is it any worse, it's just another mediocre book. Frankly, I have found all his books tolerable but none of them particularly exciting, memorable or terribly inventive.

Gibson gets a lot of mainstream recognition in the press for his books but honestly there are much better Science Fiction authors out there and even many better Cyberpunk authors out there. Bruce Sterling, who came up the ranks at the same time as Gibson, even colloborated with him on occasion, wrote more inventive and imaginative fiction but never got the same level of recognition. Many other authors since then have written extremely good cyberpunk including Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) and Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book), and Peter Hamilton's Greg Mandel series which starts with Mindstar Rising.

I'm not bashing on Gibson, more power to him that he captured the mainstream attention, I'm merely trying to point out that in my honest opinion he is certainly not the best writer in the field. I think I actually enjoyed Spook Country a little more than most of his fiction, particularly because of the Cubano/Asian crime family in NYC city he introduces into the story. They were particularly interesting in this story of a missing shipping container and the secretive manouverings of the government, billionaires, and rogue espionage agents who are all contending against each other in a race to be the first to find the container. The denouement was well thought out and satisfying and in general I don't have a lot of negatives to say about the book. After finishing it though my thoughts were simply that this was an OK book, not a wonderful one, and I think Gibson gets a lot of attention that other writers may more appropriately merit.

Editorial Review:

The New York Times bestseller from “one of the most astute and entertaining commentators on our astonishing, chaotic present.”( Washington Post Book World)

Hollis Henry is a journalist on investigative assignment for a magazine called Node, which doesn’t exist yet. Bobby Chombo is a producer working on cutting-edge art installations. In his day job, Bobby is a trouble-shooter for military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one.

Hollis Henry has been told to find him.

The Gun Seller

Hugh Laurie

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 107 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Apparently this guy is multi-talented 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I don't watch House, but I've seen Hugh Laurie in other work, and apparently he's very talented. Not only can he pull off a genuine American accent, he can write a heck of a crime novel.

The Gun Seller works as a thriller and a comedic novel. It is expertly written, very smart (well researched, with sundry technical details about motorcycles, weaponry and international espionage), and hilarious. A lot of full-time crime writers would do well to read this work.

The protagonist is in many ways a typical crime novel hero -- full of faults, doesn't quite fit in with mainstream culture, has a taste for liquor and the occasional woman, falls for a femme fatale and has at his center an admirable moral code -- but Laurie also gives Thomas Lang a hilariously scabrous interior monologue that will keep you laughing throughout. Also, as is typical in crime novels, Thomas Lang, for all his tongue-in-cheek dialogue, takes doing the right thing very seriously. At times, he is alone in a world filled with corruption, cowardice and greed.

This novel isn't just good because it's surprising that an actor could pull it off. It's excellent work on its own. It's no wonder that Laurie has become such a big success: He's got the chops.

Highly recommended for fans of crime novels, espionage thrillers and irreverent humor.

Editorial Review:

Hugh Laurie concocts an uproarious cocktail of comic zingers and over-the-top action in this "ripping spoof of the spy genre" (Vanity Fair) -- the irresistible tale of a former Scots Guard-turned-hired gun, a freelance soldier of fortune who also happens to be one heck of a nice guy.

Cold-blooded murder just isn't Thomas Lang's cup of tea. Offered a bundle to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts to warn the intended victim instead -- a good deed that soon takes a bad turn. Quicker than he can down a shot of his favorite whiskey, Lang is bashing heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales. Up against rogue CIA agents, wannabe terrorists, and an arms dealer looking to make a high-tech killing, Lang's out to save the leggy lady he has come to love...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

David Michaels

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Ghost Recon's got it all. David Michaels got it right 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

If a novel is a contract between two imaginations author David Michaels gives us more than enough ammo to fight alongside Captain Scott Mitchell and his Ghost Team.

From the Southern Philippines, Northwest Waziristan, and Xiamen, China, Mitchell and his Ghosts carry out the Army's clandestine ops; coping with the impact of unforeseen tragedy, remembering lessons-learned, and treasuring camaraderie.

But during Operation War Wrath in Xiamen, China, a decade-old tragedy resurfaces endangering the mission and the team. Mitchell now must fight his rage, complete the mission, and bring his wounded and battle-weary team out of China --- vanishing like the ghosts they trained to be.

Editorial Review:

The U.S. Army’s Special Forces are known for their highly specialized training and courage behind enemy lines. But there’s a group that’s even more stealthy and deadly. It’s comprised of the most feared operators on the face of the earth—the soldiers of Ghost Recon.

Persuader (Jack Reacher, No. 7)

Lee Child

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 118 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

'R' is for Reacher, Righteous, Readable, and (a little) Ridiculous 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

'Persuader' is the seventh novel in the Jack Reacher series and it is standard fare - for good or ill, it's about as good as this series gets. `R' stands for Reacher and Righteous and readable and a bit ridiculous. An NYT reviewer has compared him to Don Quixote, quite a stretcher, but one that makes the point about Reacher's noble motivations. Reacher's standard traits are on display: remarkable physical stamina, unbending will power, and a willingness to sacrifice himself rather than do evil (a term which he defines for himself). Reacher is still the wise-cracking loner with both a deep capacity for violence and remarkable killing skills. And once again the entire story is utterly implausible.

In this installment, Reacher is recruited by a DEA unit and the ex-military cop is off and running on the trail of the bad guys again. In fact, it turns out he's gunning for his own personal main bad guy and let's just say nobody holds a grudge like Jack Reacher. The book is at its best when Child keeps the action rolling while mixing in a parallel story from ten years in Jack's past that explains just why he hates this guy so much.

The Reacher books are certainly readable, but don't stop and think too much or the wild implausibility that keeps popping up will drive you to distraction. Good examples of both the readability and the implausibility occur right off the bat: a wild shoot-out turns out to be both more and less than it seemed and leads to Reacher quickly earning a place of great trust in the heart of a criminal enterprise. Huh? A guy with world-class killing skills just happens to pop up at just the right time and place to save your kid from kidnapping on a school day afternoon. Gee, would a criminal chieftain find that suspicious? Heck no, you give him a job in your security detail!

If you like the often-violent action and can suspend disbelief, then the Reacher books are a fun read. I have read three of them and while I enjoyed them, there are just too many other better mass market books out there with plenty of action and better stories. Try Dennis Lehane's Darkness, Take My Hand (Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro Novels) or George Pelecanos's Right as Rain (Derek Strange/Terry Quinn) or Harlan Coben's Gone for Good.

Editorial Review:

Jack Reacher.

The ultimate loner.

An elite ex-military cop who left the service years ago, he’s moved from place to place…without family…without possessions…without commitments.

And without fear. Which is good, because trouble—big, violent, complicated trouble—finds Reacher wherever he goes. And when trouble finds him, Reacher does not quit, not once…not ever.

But some unfinished business has now found Reacher. And Reacher is a man who hates unfinished business.

Ten years ago, a key investigation went sour and someone got away with murder. Now a chance encounter brings it all back. Now Reacher sees his one last shot. Some would call it vengeance. Some would call it redemption. Reacher would call it…justice.

SOLOMON'S KEY THE CODIS PROJECT: A CONSPIRACY THRILLER (Solomon's Key)

R, DOUGLAS WEBER

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An ancient secret society. The Vatican. The lost tomb of Jesus--the King of Kings And an ancient scroll that unlocks the secret of the Goddess . CODIS-the FBI's Combined DNA Index System-has found a match. A link between the past and present. Between a royal bloodline and the world's foremost terrorist. On the anniversary of their downfall at the hands of the papacy, the Knights Templar vow revenge. The ultimate spies and the ultimate threat: Reunited lovers brought together by fate, Italian-born OSI agent Nick Rossi and beautiful Mossad agent, Josie Schulman, battle an al-Qaeda orchestrated wave of terrorist attacks directed against Rome, the Vatican, and the newly elected Pope. But the investigation means plunging into Rossi's own past and into the arms of Bast, the alluring stranger, who may be his downfall. The ultimate secret: Beneath the Dome of the Rock, in Solomon's Temple, an ancient scroll is found. It unlocks the Holy See's brutally suppressed truth concerning the divine feminine, Mary Magdalene's true identify and role-and the location of history's most important tomb. The ultimate deception: As world leaders converge on Rome for the Pope's funeral, Rossi and Josie race against time and follow a cryptic trail of symbols hidden within German Renaissance paintings: the keys to a mystery that points to a secret Masonic nexus of power, the secrets of the Widow's Son. What would you do for love? What would you do for honor and country? Two strong-willed women find themselves at opposing sides of a struggle for power. Josie a Mossad agent, who is battle weary and disillusioned, and the other-Bast a notorious al-Qaeda operative. But they share three things in common: they seek revenge for the murder of family members, and they both seek love and meaning in their lonesome existence. The third thing they share is the affection of the same man. The man is Nick Rossi intelligence operative stationed in Rome. Rossi seeks the advice of his uncle Professor Giovanni, a man versed in history and the schemes of secret societies. Together they must solve a riddle, clues left by a Masonic Nexus that has infiltrated the Vatican. Rossi knows that his uncle's and even the Pope's life depends upon his actions. And time is running out. Behind the veil of enigma lies the Eschatology Institute, a New Age pop culture Church, complete with Hollywood celebrity spokespersons, secret oaths, and dark agendas. Its leader is on a mad power trip and will kill anyone who stands in his way. And his sights are set on the Vatican.

The Talbot Odyssey

Nelson DeMille

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

An early Nelson DeMille, and not a very good one 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Rather like the early Robert Parker, Nelson DeMille wasn't nearly as good when he started. Or so this book indicates. It is a long, mostly tedious, spy thriller, the early parts almost kept me from finishing it. Things pick up, but it never has the zip, or for that matter the humor of the later books.

Editorial Review:

It started as a simple spy hunt. It became a desperate battle to save the west. For forty years Western intelligence agents have known a terrible secret: the Russians have a mole code-named Talbot inside the CIA. At first Talbot is suspected of killing European agents. Then a street-smart ex-cop uncovers a storm of espionage and murder on the streets of New York, while in a Long Island suburb a civic demonstration against the Russian mission masks a desperate duel of nerves and wits. Engineered by Talbot, a shadow world of suspicion and deceit is spilling onto the streets leading to a new Soviet weapon and a first-strike war plan threatening the foundations of American government. For the U.S., time is running out. For Talbot, the time is now.

Death and Honor (Honor Bound)

W.E.B. Griffin, William E. Butterworth IV

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The crackling new novel in the bestselling Honor Bound series by the #1 New York Times– bestselling master of the military thriller.

W.E. B. Griffin’s Honor Bound saga of World War II espionage in Germany and Argentina has long been immensely popular: “Enough derring-do, romance and action to satisfy Griffin’s legion of fans and bring him new ones” (Rocky Mountain News); “Cletus Frade’s services to his countries, his fealty to honor and his courage in the face of danger lift this thriller right off the bookshelf and onto the nightstand” (The Star-Ledger).

The year is 1943, and Argentina is officially neutral, but crawling with every kind of spy, sympathizer, and military official imaginable. The hero is Cletus Frade, a Marine pilot recruited by the OSS, with strong family ties to Argentina, and in Death and Honor—Griffin’s fourth book in the series and the first since 1999—he’s got a lot on his hands.

OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan has asked him to set up his own official-but-really-OSS airline in Argentina, using “loaned” Lockheed Lodestars and Constellations. Of even more concern are two interwoven German operations. The first is a government scheme for Jews outside the Fatherland to purchase the freedom of their relatives in concentration camps, who will then be transported to Argentina and Uruguay. The second has to do with where that money is going: a plan called Operation Phoenix, which will establish safe havens for senior Nazi officials in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Needless to say, the OSS is very interested in both of them, and if Frade can somehow find out a little more . . . without getting killed, that is. Which, as Frade is about to find out, is easier said than done.

Rich with the special flair that Griffin’s fans have long come to expect from him, Death and Honor is another “immensely entertaining adventure” (Kirkus Reviews) from one of our finest storytellers.

A Case of Need

Jeffrey Hudson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 102 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Stimulating Story that kept my interest 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Case of Need is a stimulating story that kept my interest and I found that it was hard to put down. It educated s on some of the arguments for both sides of the abortion issue while maintaining a very good story line and character set. The plot revolves around who performed an illegal abortion on a girl from an affluent family.
As you read on you that the abortion killed the girl, so the person who performed the abortion is guilty of murder. For medical thriller fans I would highly recommend this book.

An unintentional but revealing "portrait of the author as a young man" 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Dr. John Berry is a pathologist who's been covering for a colleague's policy of occasionally providing abortions. The colleague, Dr. Arthur Lee, truly believes that failure to provide medical care - in the form of a safe hospital procedure - constitutes malpractice, morally speaking. He bases this belief on the number of women who, when refused such a procedure, end their pregnancies anyway by methods far more dangerous.

Now Art Lee is in jail, charged with an abortion that John Berry believes he didn't perform. The patient, daughter of a prominent Boston surgeon, died. According to her family, Karen Randall was a saintly young woman who's been foully murdered. According to Karen's friends and other associates, though, she was anything else but saintly. The same thing goes for her outraged father, and for most of the other people Dr. Berry winds up investigating as he desperately searches for the truth about Karen's death. Who actually did perform the abortion that killed her? That's the only information sure to free Dr. Lee before his case comes to trial, and a trial all by itself - even if it ends in acquittal - will kill his career, in this medical and social world of the late 1960s.

Michael Crichton's first novel, originally published under a pseudonym, is an amazing piece of work for so young a writer (he was 26). It's an intriguing detective story entwined with a stinging commentary on social hypocrisy and medical ethics, that 40 years later had the power to put me back in the world of my own adolescence. A world where unwed motherhood automatically branded the woman as at worst immoral, at best grossly immature; and where the laws of most U.S. states made termination of pregnancy in a hospital all but impossible, except when physicians like the fictional Art Lee and John Berry falsified the patient's diagnosis to provide a D&C for apparent "medical necessity."

Brrr. That world's memory scares me all by itself. The surprising thing about this book, though, isn't its "message" (it ought to be required reading for any woman who's grown up knowing she had control of her reproductive capacity from menarche onward). It's the look backward into the time and place that shaped this successful author, and then realizing - if you've read as many of his books as I have - how hard it was for him to let this world go, in creating the characters and plots for his later works.

Editorial Review:

Written by the author of "Jurassic Park", this medical thriller won the USA's Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel. Was it murder, or horribly botched surgery, or was someone in the great Boston medical centre violating the Hippocratic oath? One doctor is willing to seek out the truth.

London Bridges (Alex Cross)

James Patterson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 297 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

What. Is. Going. On. Here? 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Well, I can't say I wasn't warned: "Big Bad Wolf" exhibited all of the warning signs of a once-fascinating fiction franchise going down the toilet. I should have stopped after BBW. More importantly, James Patterson should have, too. Instead, he takes the mess that was BBW, adds a stray random villain and some other leavings from previous books, stirs in a partnership between that random villain and the Big Bad Wolf that makes no sense based on what we know of either, throws in an "Alex Cross, This Is Your Life" parade of characters, adds a dash of Al Quaeda (?!), and voila! the crap casserole that is "London Bridge." Patterson can't tie up his current plot threads and he has an annoying tendency to keep re-introducing characters (such as Christine) who once served a narrative purpose but now just add pointless drama and stretch the book another 10 pages. This book is just a mess; I was really disappointed because I'd been hoping for something to redeem BBW. Also, there apparently has never been a book in history that the Publisher's Weekly reviewers haven't loved, so posting their reviews is a waste of space.

Editorial Review:

Alex Cross is back--and so is the Big Bad Wolf. Terrorists have seized the worlds largest cities. London, Washington, DC, New York, and Frankfurt will be destroyed, unless their demands are met--and their demands are impossible. After a city in the western United States is fire bombed--a practice run--Alex Cross knows that it is only a matter of time before the bombers threats to the other cities are brutally executed.Heading up the investigation by the FBI, CIA, and Interpol, Alex Cross is stunned when surveillance photos show Geoffrey Shafer, the Weasel, near one of the bombing sites. He senses the presence of the Wolf as well, the most vicious predator he has ever battled. With millions of lives in the balance, Cross has to see if the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world can stay ahead of these two mens cunning.