Books read in March / April
May. 1st, 2012 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fen 7) The Tourist, by Olen Steinhauer
8) The Nearest Exit, by Olen Steinhauer
9) The Death of Grass, by John Christopher
10) An American Spy, by Olen Steinhauer
11) Soft Target, by Stephen Hunter
12) Leviathan Wakes, by James S A Corey
After a couple of false starts (extended library loans, being given the paperback) I finally made headway with Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist, which had piqued my interest in 2009 when it was both longlisted for the CWA Steel Daggers and recommended by Stephen King as an essential summer read. The hero, Milo Weaver, works for an off-the-books US intelligence agency, the Department of Tourism, and his criss-crossing of various European capitals and transport hubs has the agreeable flavour of the Matt Damon Bourne film franchise - a key difference being that Milo has a wife and daughter back home.
The comparisons with le Carre are more accurate I think when applied to The Nearest Exit, and An American Spy opens with a lengthy section from the point of view of Xin Zhu, the Karla analogue of the sequence. The Nearest Exit builds to an unforgettable scene of blue lights winking out of existence on a map ; An American Spy has violent reprisal but also compelling sequences inside the committee rooms of the Chinese intelligence service. Engrossing stuff.
The Death of Grass I read in one sitting, for the first time in over twenty years.
Soft Target is the most execrable thing I've come across since I started keeping track of my reading; a Die-Hard-in-a-mall scenario that ends with the villain cornered in the mall's local multiplex making his last stand as Die Hard runs through the projector.
Leviathan Awakes is another bang-on recommendation courtesy of Jo Walton ; "the best seventies SF novel I'd read in simply ages".
8) The Nearest Exit, by Olen Steinhauer
9) The Death of Grass, by John Christopher
10) An American Spy, by Olen Steinhauer
11) Soft Target, by Stephen Hunter
12) Leviathan Wakes, by James S A Corey
After a couple of false starts (extended library loans, being given the paperback) I finally made headway with Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist, which had piqued my interest in 2009 when it was both longlisted for the CWA Steel Daggers and recommended by Stephen King as an essential summer read. The hero, Milo Weaver, works for an off-the-books US intelligence agency, the Department of Tourism, and his criss-crossing of various European capitals and transport hubs has the agreeable flavour of the Matt Damon Bourne film franchise - a key difference being that Milo has a wife and daughter back home.
The comparisons with le Carre are more accurate I think when applied to The Nearest Exit, and An American Spy opens with a lengthy section from the point of view of Xin Zhu, the Karla analogue of the sequence. The Nearest Exit builds to an unforgettable scene of blue lights winking out of existence on a map ; An American Spy has violent reprisal but also compelling sequences inside the committee rooms of the Chinese intelligence service. Engrossing stuff.
The Death of Grass I read in one sitting, for the first time in over twenty years.
Soft Target is the most execrable thing I've come across since I started keeping track of my reading; a Die-Hard-in-a-mall scenario that ends with the villain cornered in the mall's local multiplex making his last stand as Die Hard runs through the projector.
Leviathan Awakes is another bang-on recommendation courtesy of Jo Walton ; "the best seventies SF novel I'd read in simply ages".
