The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal, and Murder by Alan S. Cowell documents the events leading up to the radiological poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko two years ago in London’s Millenium Hotel. The story was all over the international news at the time. Alan S. Cowell was the London Bureau Chief of the New York Times and covered the story, which eventually became this book.

This is the type of the book that I usually love. I’ve read quite a few accounts of various espionage services (CSIS, CIA, KGB, Mossad, MI6) as well as accounts of individuals caught up in international intrigue. This is a particular favourite topic of mine, and this book should have been a slam-dunk favourite. It wasn’t.

It is not the subject, but Cowell’s approach that is off-putting. Instead of allowing events and players to demonstrate the historic aspects of the poisoning, Cowell insists on reminding the reader that it is historic — frequently. In addition to being repetitious, it leads me to conclude the exact opposite: that the incident wasn’t so historic since the events and people can’t be trusted to speak for themselves.

There are also many details included that distracted from the narrative. There is no need to include information such as the beverage consumed at an interview or the clothes an interviewee wore unless it is pertinent (it isn’t). This is particularly frustrating because there are a lot of people to keep track of in this narrative, which is hard enough without extraneous information.

Most frustrating are Cowell’s interjections as to what he imagines, with 20/20 hindsight, people are thinking or feeling at particular times in the timeline. These are things that Cowell has no way of knowing and these speculations don’t offer any insight into the events in any case.

Terminal Spy is marketed as a “page-turning narrative,” and it might have been were it not bogged down in details. If you can read around the details, there is interesting history here. I’ll be passing on my copy to the military historian of the family to see what he can make of it.

First Daughter by Eric van Lustbader is a political thriller that may hit too close to home for some. Jack McClure is one of the Bureau’s top ATF agents, despite finding reading a continual nemesis due to his dyslexia. When the president-elect’s daughter, Alli, is kidnapped mere weeks before the swearing in ceremony, McClure is hand-picked to get her back. What follows is a journey that takes McClure into his past and the country’s future as he tries to save Alli from her kidnapper and the country from itself.

I enjoyed First Daughter (in fact, I read the whole book in 24 hours). It is intricate enough to keep you guessing with enough action and intrigue to keep you from thinking too much. The effects of dyslexia, positive and negative, on Jack McClure’s life and daily functioning are not only interesting but integral to the plot. Also interesting is the interplay between religion and atheism, though this is where, unfortunately, some of First Daughter‘s potential audience may be lost.

The struggle of separating church from state, which has increasingly been lost in the United States in the last decade (maybe it has been longer, but I live outside the United States and am going by what enters my consciousness through the international news), is central to First Daughter. There is a battle between secular and religious views fought throughout the book both in the main plot and in the private lives of all the characters.

The characterization of religion and the religious is unflattering (and, arguably, so is that of the secularists), which may offend or at the very least put off some readers. The positions on both sides are extreme. I was not offended, but I was starting to tire of it by the end of the book. For another perspective, see Christine’s review at She Reads Books. First Daughter is worth reading, whichever side of the argument you inhabit, as a glimpse of a possible future, but don’t expect nuanced philosophical positions (it is, after all, a thriller first).

After reading First Daughter I realize that I may have been too hasty in avoiding van Lustbader’s books, which I had been doing primarily because he took over writing Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. I’m a fan of the original Robert Ludlum trilogy so I wasn’t thrilled to see the character passed on to another writer. I’m not ready to pick up a Bourne book, but I am going to look for van Lustbader’s other books on the strength of First Daughter.

Kimberley Quincy is an FBI Special Agent. Someone is killing prostitutes according to a pregnant prostitute who insists she’ll only talk to Quincy. A predator who uses spiders in very nasty ways. The only problem is there are no bodies, no missing persons reported. Despite the lack of proof, Quincy can’t not look into it as she tries to balance her FBI career, her new husband’s expectations, and impending motherhood.

Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly …

I had never read a Lisa Gardner novel before, so I didn’t know Kimberly Quincy (a recurring character), but that really didn’t cause me any problems getting into or following Say Goodbye. This was a very quick read. I started one night, forced myself to go to sleep after 100 pages, and then read the rest the next morning!


I was a little surprised that the book started with a blow job (I’m not giving anything away, it is literally on the first page). I wasn’t expecting that for this genre, but it wasn’t belabored and or gratuitous.

The book’s subject matter involves child molestation, serial killing and a pregnant protagonist in danger. If you’ve read Tess Gerritsen‘s series with the Surgeon serial killer and were put off by the subject matter then this book may not be for you. Otherwise, I recommend it as a fast-paced thriller.

I will have to go back and reread this book more slowly and look at how it was put together. I read too fast and missed some clues Gardner left along the way. I did find the separate plot of the old woman and the young boy confusing because I couldn’t quite figure out how they fit in and whether it was a flashback or in the present (it did come together in the end).

This was my first Lisa Gardner book and I will definitely be putting her on my reading list.

I have to admit that I’m not usually a fan of short stories, but they are starting to grow on me now that I’ve subscribed to Asimov’s, Analog, and NeoOpsis (which is what I should be catching up on instead of books). Where was I going with this? Oh right, Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories. And I liked them … a lot, actually, since I still remember the characters several weeks and several books later.

Anyway, the book is split into two parts. The first part is 5 short stories of unrelated characters. The second part is three stories about the same two characters told about different times in their lives and from different points of view. The connecting thread of all stories in the book is that they are about Bengali immigrants to America and their struggles to honour their heritage and accept their new circumstances. Lahiri focuses on the struggles of family, love, and death.

Lahiri provides a lot of information about Bengali culture without making you feel like you are being taught anything (a skill I’m still working on myself). The characters and situations are believable and cross cultures. I particularly enjoyed the second part of the book where all the stories dealt with the same characters and I got to spend more time with them.

I was going to pass this book on when I was done with it, not thinking that I would enjoy it. Much to my surprise, this is a book that I will reread which is the highest compliment that I can pay a book.

I’ve tagged this book for the ACOA collection only because there is a short story on alcoholism in the family that I thought might be of interest. I’m always wondering how others deal with it or imagine it would be dealt with. I’ve made a note to myself to come back and revisit that particular story from an ACOA perspective and put up a separate post on it.

My only complaint (which you will hear about again if you read more reviews here) is that the publisher has chosen to grind the pages so that they are uneven. This is done to give the illusion of books of yesteryear when pages weren’t bound so uniformly, but it just annoys me because it makes the pages difficult to turn and to flip through to find wherever you left off reading (yes, I know of bookmarks, but that doesn’t help when you fall asleep while reading and wake up to find the book on the floor imitating a lemming having fallen from a great height).

If you decide to pick this up and do it through Amazon, a click through the links below would be appreciated to give me a few pennies for books: