The Book of Spies: A Novel [Audio CD]

There are a lot of smart, educated people in this story. Unfortunately, almost all of the movement in the story seems to happen because of those smart people doing unbelievably dumb things.

Sadly, this seems to be the state of thriller writing today. Create a lot of cliff hanging and make sure the action never stops and it must be a great read, right? Well, no. Not when you constantly find yourself shaking your head and saying "no way that would happen." It's kind of sad, really, because the concept of the book isn't bad, but the execution definitely is (bad, that is).

Over and over again in the story there are "why would they do that?" incidents and "not a chance that would work" moments. Most of the time the heroes seem incapable of thinking of anything, and then--when they need a miracle--they seem positively clairvoyant. It's a weird combination.

I'll grant that the book isn't boring. I almost stopped on it three or four times because of the number of ridiculous elements, but I wasn't ever bored. It's just not very good. There are better ways to spend your time.

The Book of Spies is Gayle Lynds' spy/thriller novel, and it is an enjoyable read. The story is based on the Library of Gold which was Ivan the Terrible's collection of original works dating back throughout history which disappeared after his death. The Book of Spies is one of the manuscripts, and it has turned up in Lynds' novel that bears its name. The two central characters of the story are Eva Blake (a library/museum curator specializing in ancient manuscripts) and Judd Blake (a former military intelligence officer). The CIA is interested in The Book of Spies as there is thought to be a link to funding of terrorists, and they need the expertise of someone such as Eva to help them find the connection. They also bring in Blake to help as he has personal reasons to pursue the Library of Gold. The story that unfolds takes readers from North American to Europe and various parts of Asia. The story of the Library of Gold is one that conspiracy theory lovers will enjoy greatly. Using short chapters averaging about 5 pages each Lynds paces the story at a quick pace while walking the fine line between giving too much information and frustrating the reader. At times the plot twists were predictable, but overall I found the story compelling. The thing that I found with this novel that I haven't in a lot of others was that I felt strongly about the good guys and the bad guys. While the characters are not overly developed (but this isn't a character study), there weren't many that I was lukewarm about. Even though there are ties to terrorists, the primary focus of the story is the Library of Gold. The two things that keep this from being outstanding to me are the beginning and the end. The first three chapters covered three years in fifteen pages. The remainder of the main story takes place over a matter of weeks. It would have been nice to smooth this out a little bit as the first chapters form an impression in the reader's mind what to expect. I also thought the end of the story was a little anti-climactic and played out "by the book". All in all, though, The Book of Spies is a very enjoyable read. If you like espionage and conspiracy thrillers, give this a try.

Overall: B

Gayle Lynds can write a good thriller but this is not one of them. The characters are so wooden I have splinters in my eyes. This should really be 2.5 Stars. What Library of Gold? Ivan the Terrible's. Secretly buried under the Kremlin and no one can find it? Gggeeezz. She sure slings alot of hash in this story--reminds be of a very bad version of a Steve Barry novel. At least Steve uses real history...mostly. The set-up is looking all over for The Library of Gold, you know Ivan The Terribles book collection of ancient golden and be-jeweled illuminated books and we have the CIA and the evil Book Club grappling for power of this imaginary book collection. The guys in the Book Club are so wicked and evil and rich that I couldn't stop laughing at how hokey they are. I really expected a better read from this after reading all these 5 star reviews? There are so many "facts" which are not researched at all. Like Mahmud and Ghazni and Mahmud's diamond mines in Khost, Afghanistan. Mahmud got his diamonds conquering parts of India--not mines in Khost. Gggeeezzz and these are supposed to be $100 Trillon Dollar diamond mines? And the Book Club guys are supposed to be financially intelligent? I like ficton but this is pure fantasy. No thrills here and very predictible with a rushed ending.

There are so many holes in this story, but the biggest hole is The Library of Gold itself which consists of books which are gold and jewel encrusted and very rare and some dating back to the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Priceless. Books that survived he destruction of Alexandria's Library??? Supposedly Ivan's Library of Gold (800 books) has some of the works of Homer and Aristophanes and Archemides etc etc etc from Alexandria and Homer's bookcover is covered in a dazzling gold as are most of the books. This is all wrong. They wrote on papyrus, animal skins or parchment scrolls--not books like we have today. The concept of books like we know today, called a codex (pages with covers) did not come about until 300AD +/-, let alone gold and jewel encrusted covers or illuminated manuscripts. Scrolls didn't have covers. The book codex, pages, cover, format began in 300AD as papyrus became unavailable for scrolls. So the books Gayle describes are just IMPOSSIBLE. Ivan's Library should have been papyrus, parchment or animal skin scrolls...not books. No gold. No jewels. No Illuminated Manuscripts.

Next. Myth: The myth says that Ivan had all of the Library of Gold translated by Monks into Russian working beneath the Kremlin. So after all these centuries there should have been some of these books found written in Russian somewhere. Fact: Absolutely not one single book in Russian has ever been found.

Of course I just can't believe she has characters who are being pursued using their personal cell phones and not throwaways. Duh. Talk about stupid spies?

Eva and Judd are the two main characters and they are solid wood and poorly developed and they run from one mini-mayhem to the next quickly. It gets tedious. Almost monotonous...predictable. I never felt very involved with this story. No sitting on the edge of my seat...no suspense.

Here is a piece of sappy narrative LOL, "She remembered how he had pulled her to him after she had almost pitched off the yacht, how he had wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, how he had kissed her hair...the wonderful sound of his pounding heart. His musky, wet smell." This is almost Harlequin quality.

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! DON'T READ. The Carnivore makes another appearance at the end and he is there because he is pissed that Chapmann has put out a hit on him with contract killers. The Carnivore is a killer with principles and a man of his word and he is at the island to kill Chapmann for trying fo have him killed. But, after drugging the book club for some strange reason he doesn't kill Chapmann? The story ends with the military suddenly invading the island and killing scads of the bad guys was clumsy. They must have killed 30 of them and our heroes killing another dozen. You get to the end and we have the evil Chapmann and the book clubbers who have arranged for all the murder and mayhem they don't even get a day in jail because their lawyers get them off the hook? C'mon Chapmann deserved killing, not a free pass.

All in all it is an Ok read for the thriller genre but nothing special. I'm sure she follows some thriller formula which might please some readers but it didn't work for me and I wish it did. It does take a skilled writer to have so many story holes and yet still sell a million copies.

I wasted my time reading this. Read at your own peril. Ludlum was the master of this genre, re-read one of his.

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