Lindsey Duncan, an agent for the CIA, has been sent home to Washington and is on administrative leave after having a liaison with another intelligence agent. Her boss asks for her help in an internal investigation to uncover a mole in the department that has led to the death of three Russian informants. Back in the office, Lindsey meets Theresa Warner, nicknamed the “Red Widow”, the wife of a former director killed in Russia under mysterious circumstances. Lindsey and Theresa become friends but what Lindsey uncovers in her investigation could unravel everything.
On the one hand, this book was great because the main character is a woman and this is a spy novel highlighting the strength of females. On the other hand, it really annoyed me the way that so much emphasis was put on the potential end of Lindsey’s career due to the scandal from her last assignment. She kept talking about this horrible thing that had happened during her last assignment that got her in trouble. I thought something tragic had happened or that someone had died and then we find out she was just sleeping with an MI5 agent. Really? I am not in any intelligence agency but I am skeptical that a man would have gotten in trouble for sleeping with a female agent from another agency.
Besides that, I thought this book was a bit slow. The plot is intriguing – there is murder, poison, spies, and espionage, but I did not really get the thriller side of it. I never felt an urgency or that I desperately needed to know what was going to happen. There’s not a lot of action and instead, we get a good deal of thinking and figuring out what is going on. Honestly, I found some parts to be a bit boring.
I did enjoy the way that the book seemed to emphasize that everyone has flaws. The book touches on the personal toll that working for these agencies can have on people and all of the sacrifices the agents make to do their jobs. I was a bit disappointed in the ending as I thought that some characters were not penalized as they should have been, but I am not a spy so what do I know.
Seeing that the author had a 35-year career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies, I thought this book would have been a bit more interesting.
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