The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni

[sholio]

So, moving on to Kindle Unlimited books I actually enjoyed ... I finished reading this one tonight - The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni. It's a fairly straightforward Cold War spy plot (someone is killing undercover agents; the hero needs to find out whodunnit without giving himself away) transplanted to the modern era.

Despite really enjoying some of the tropes, I don't read that widely in spy fiction; it's the sort of thing (much like steampunk and Westerns) where I like some of the trappings and tropes a great deal, but often find the actual execution offputting. However, I found the first chapter enough of a hook to keep going, and ended up enjoying the book a lot, for the most part (see caveat below). The main character is a likable guy, a retired CIA agent with a wife and family who gets reactivated for one last mission, and the book never slipped over into the rah-rah patriotism that is one reason why I don't tend to read a lot of this kind of book; in fact, it's much more Le Carré-ish in the sense that our government and their government are both pretty terrible, and the agents on the ground have more in common with each other than with the guys giving them their marching orders.

My one big caveat is that the pacing is just weird. The author is very good at writing tense, engrossing, detail-rich action scenes, but a little too committed (for my tastes, anyway) to the kind of realism that results in these tense, exciting action scenes coming to an anticlimactic end and then being followed by several chapters of the characters dealing with the realistic-but-dull political fallout.

My favorite part of the book by far was the middle third, which is a tense cat-and-mouse chase between the hero (assisted by a Russian double agent), and a pursuing Russian agent who is clever and resourceful and not really a bad guy. This unfortunately peters out with no particular sense of climax and is followed by an endless court case that utterly failed to engage me. Also, none of the book's questions are really answered; the plot pingpongs around between different setpieces which feel like they belong to several different books.

However, the next book in the series (not out yet) looks -- from the description, at least -- like it's going to focus on the aspects I loved best about this book, this time with this book's hero and the Russian agent from the previous book teaming up, and also might feature the return of a supposedly-dead supporting character from this book who I really liked and didn't want to lose. I plan to check it out, and wish it was out so I could read it now, because now I have a yearning for more like this.

Along those lines ... does anyone have recommendations for good spy thrillers? It's okay if it's dark and violent and ends badly; in this genre, I'm fine with that, as long as the journey is compelling enough to make it worth it. Authors/series I've read and enjoyed in the past: Le Carré, Charles McCarry, the Mrs. Pollifax books (which are really more spy cozies, but do have some of the tropes), and, believe it or not, the James Bond books, which have not aged well IN THE SLIGHTEST, but I read all of them in college and actually still have a few (and an enduring fondness for Felix Lieter, James Bond's lighter and friendlier American counterpart). Movie recommendations are welcome too.

Comments

[leesa_perrie]

Okay, these aren't recs in the sense that I've read them, as spy stuff doesn't interest me much in book form (and in movie, I prefer early James Bond and, for TV, original Man from UNCLE, which gives you an idea of the sort of spy stuff I like - ie, not at all serious, lol!), but a female friend of mine really liked the Tom Clancy novels, and I've heard good things about Alistair MacLean too (mainly from a couple of men I know).

Whilst googling to find their names, I came across something about a couple of female writers. I thought that might be interesting, getting the female take on the spy world.

Valerie Plame: The CIA officer who was famously exposed by the Bush White House found success with a memoir, and so she inevitably moved on to spy fiction. Library Journal calls her debut novel, "Blowback," co-authored by Sarah Lovett, a "tightly wound, vigorously deployed thriller echoing the real-life stories and CIA agents and their enemies."

Stella Rimington: "At Risk," the first novel by the former head of Britain's MI5, follows a British operative trying to stop a terrorist attack. The Guardian called Rimingston's memoirs "tedious," but found that in her fiction "she is jolly good on magic mushrooms and the art of making bombs out of silly putty."

Make of them what you will! :)

[sholio]

I had no idea Valerie Plame was writing fiction now! Wowzers. I will definitely check these out; it's always interesting to read fiction written by people who are writing about something they know intimately. Thank you for the recs!

I've read a bunch of Alistair MacLean's books too, back when I was reading more of this kind of thing; in fact, I might still have a couple. He is very good at tense action, though yeah - they're very "guy" books!

[writerlibrarian]

You might enjoy Alan Furst's novels set around WW2. Some before some during. I enjoyed that they are for a lot of them in Eastern Europe.

[sholio]

Thank you for the rec - I haven't heard of him! (Though the mention of WW2 reminds me of another spy fiction writer whose books I really enjoy that I forgot to mention above - Ken Follett.)

[sartorias]

Just finished #4 by Olen Steinhauer, which was a wild a spy ride as you can get. (I hadn't read any of the previous, so the characters showing up and vanishing were all new, heightening the experience.)

[sholio]

That sounds fun - I'll check it out! Thank you for the rec. :D

[philomytha]

I'm not sure whether or not to count this in the spy thriller genre as a movie, but it is a movie about spying and is really, really good: The Lives of Others, about a Stasi agent in East Berlin who monitors a potentially disaffected artist and his girlfriend, and gets caught up in their lives instead. German-language with subtitles.

[sholio]

Oooh, that sounds VERY much my kind of thing; I'll check it out. Thank you for the rec!

[philomytha]

Just to say, this post reminded me that I had Stella Rimington's At Risk on my TBR pile, and I've just finished it and it is a great spy thriller (with a female lead!) and I've instantly gone and bought her next one on the strength of it. Obviously lots of very accurate detail on what it's like inside MI5 and inter-service rivalries and interactions, and a really good look at a spy chase from both sides.

[aella_irene]

I have a difficult relationship with the work of Helen MacInnes. Sometimes her work is very good, sometimes it is less good, in that she is writing pre-Philby fiction in a post-Philby world, if that makes sense.