This was one of those books I picked up because Amazon offered it to me for free, but I found myself drawn into it. There are a boatload of thriller/murder mystery novels out there, and this one stands a bit above the pack. Not quite a "Wow, this book is amazing," but definitely a, "Hey, this is pretty good, worth a read." ( )

Fun fast spy thriller ( )

This started promisingly enough, but if you've read one CIA conspiracy thriller, you've read them all. It's solid enough but no surprises.

If this is your kind of book, then Charles Cumming and Edward Wilson do it immeasurably better. ( )

Audiobook. Interesting novel. Dan is a trouble-shooter for the CIA and learns that his colleagues are being eliminated one by one with him and his friend Charlie on the list. Enlisting the aid of Patrick, a former boss at the CIA who is now operating a super-secret agency trying to track down some rogue elements within the agency, Dan flies to Sweden where a man had just saved the life of a girl during a bus crash. He did not survive and the peculiar thing is he theoretically didn't exist. Working with a Swedish intelligence officer, they discover his identity but also that he had a very sophisticated, hidden office in a cabin in the Swedish woods from where he was investigating precisely the man being looked at by Patrick who has been eliminating CIA operatives.

While I found the rationale behind the cover-up to be on the thin side and the romance between Dan and the Swedish operative tenuous, it's a good story and an enjoyable listen. ( )

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was fantastic! I greatly enjoyed the excellent plotting, the twists, and the action.

In addition to receiving this through Netgalley, I also purchased it through the Amazon Kindle First program, assuming it was an effort to plug a rising author. I was stunned at the quality of the writing and the tightness of the plot in this story. The author has a pretty long track record, and this is the kind of work that you should expect from a well-established author.

You won't be disappointed. While Swedish mysteries are all the rage right now, and this book is marketed as such, it really has a much wider European travelogue sweep than that; it just happens that the death in Sweden kicks off the story.

Overall, a very quick, and very satisfying read. It was reminiscent of early Ludlum, with some obvious nods to The Bourne Identity, I'll be looking for more of Kevin Wignall's work from here on. ( )