Customer Reviews

The Cutout

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

What I liked best about the book was the dilemma the main character found herself in. In most thrillers the central character is either charged with the task of find the villain or has been wronged so they have a personal grudge. What the author has done so well here is to create a central character that, for reasons that I won't mention as it will ruin the plot, is extremely conflicted about finding out the truth. I think this creates a much more real character with conflicting motivations which makes the plot that much more interesting.

She also gives you a lens to view the problems in the Balkans that is, even though it is fiction, probably much more accurate and in depth then the one you get through the media.

Lastly, it is a real page-turner. And those are really rare.

Francine Mathews, take a bow. THE CUTOUT is a fierce and dynamic thriller that posits a truly chilling "What if?" beginning and carries us through some hairpin twists and turns.

What I really appreciated even more than the inventive plot, however, was the character of Caroline, who got me in the gut. Everything she did seemed right, everything she felt I understood, and I wanted to spend a whole lot more time with her when this book was done - I can't think of higher praise than that.

While giving a controversial speech in Berlin, the Vice President of the United States is kidnapped by a known group of neo-nazi terrorists. What is surprising and shocking to CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael is that one of the extremists appears to be her dead husband, also a CIA agent, who was supposedly killed years ago in a plane crash.

The Cutout is drenched with international intrigue, espionage, biological terrorism, vivid details of what it is like to work inside the CIA (thanks to the author's real-life work experience as an analyst), maps of eastern and central Europe (as to not lose the reader geographically), and marvelous psychological suspense.

Francine Mathews clearly knows her stuff and she does a terrific job of leading us through the maze of espionage activities from the vantage point of one who has worked in this arena, without losing our interest. Actually, the only thing I lost while reading this book was about 6 hours of sleep!

Well worth it, I might add.

Highly recommended.

Cris

The Cutout is the ultimate page-turner--a riveting, heartwrenching plot and unforgettable characters in unique, fascinating settings. I couldn't put it down...and my family is still mad at me for ignoring them. Start it when you have plenty of uninterrupted time!

In a heartpounding thriller that can't be topped for its intelligence and tension, Francine Mathews shows she deserves all comparisons to le Carre and Ludlum. A former CIA analyst herself, Mathews walks her readers along the scuffed linoleum of CIA hallways, through the musky smoke rising from the vendor carts of Budapest at dusk, and when least expected, it launches them headfirst into a confrontation with their most potent terrors. Mathews has authored other notable books, but THE CUTOUT is perhaps her finest to date. Readers should hang on tight...this book was a rollercoaster ride I didn't want to see end. Sequel! Sequel!

A "cutout" is the term for a third person used to conceal the contact between two people...a pawn.

CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael and her husband were partners in a business where betrayal is a way of life. They worked together until one mission went wrong...her husband is killed by a terrorist group known as April 30.

After mourning the death of her husband for two years, Caroline, will receive the shocking news that her husband is NOT dead, and he is involved in the kidnapping of the Vice President of the United States.

The CIA headquarters will be thrown into turmoil, and with trying to keep the discovery of their agent still being alive a secret, they will send Caroline on a mission that may cost her life.

Caroline must go to Germany as a "cutout", her mission: save the Vice President, find out if her husband is an agent gone bad, or is he so deep undercover that even the agency does not know what he is up to, and find out who is behind a twisted plan to change the face of Europe.

Caroline knows the risks involved in her line of work, but in this deadly game someone must die, and the first to go is the "pawn"!

"The Cutout" is a well written tale of international intrigue; the plot moves at a break-neck pace, with twists and turns at every bend.

Francine Mathews breathes life back into a genre that has been drying up; her novel is intricately plotted, but easy to read, and the large cast of characters never gets confusing.

Readers will applaude Ms. Mathews for bringing fun back to the adventure/thriller genre.

Nick Gonnella

The terrorists kidnapped Vice President Sophie Payne while she was giving a speech in Berlin. From top to bottom, the entire staff of the CIA is stunned by the abduction of the Vice President. However, no group is as shocked as the Counterterrorist Center (CTC), who see a film of the incident in which a deceased agent Eric Carmichael flies the helicopter involved in the incident.

Eric's wife Caroline works in the CTC and cannot understand what is happening. Bewildered and hurt by her spouse's return to life, she reflects back to thirty months ago when they were last together in Budapest before she flew to Virginia and he died in a plane bombing on his way to Istanbul. Her superiors wonder if Caroline, a long time loyal worker, might be Eric's mole, but decide she is the only hope of acting as a contact with Eric's group in order to free the Vice President.

THE CUTOUT is an exciting espionage thriller that will provide immense enjoyment to genre fans. The story line from the onset is fast-paced, never slows down even during an insider's look at the "spy school" training program, and ends with an exhilarating and realistic climax. Caroline is a fabulous character struggling between disbelief and love while the support cast on both sides of the Atlantic augment the plot with realism and validity. Francine Mathews, author of the wonderful Jane Austen mysteries (under the name of Barron) writes an intelligent work and offers her audience a brilliant counterterrorist tale that will draw her historical mystery fans into a different genre that will be well worth the trip.

Harriet Klausner

I bought this book about 10 hours ago and despite the Oscars on t.v., I started reading it and could not put it down. I read through the 400 pages in about six hours!!

This is one of the best air port fiction on international intrigue in recent memory. Forget techno babble of Tom Clancy, and contrived dribbles of other ersatz "thriller" writers out there today, let's hope that Francine Mathews comes out with sequel after sequel! And forget too Jack Ryan, there is a new fictional hero at the CIA: Caroline Carmichael!!

The gist of the plot: still grieving the loss of her husband, a CIA operative who perished in a plan crash some three years ago, Caroline Carmichael, an analyst for the CIA is called into work on the kidnapping of the Vice President of the U.S. Carmichael then learns that her dead husband is alive and behind the kidnapping. What follows then is a mixture of creative and intriguing fictional narrative, lessons in political history of Central Europe, and studies of three dimensional characters that make you feel that every thing that the writer writes of is REAL and that you are RIGHT there as the actions happen.

This is the kind of air port fiction that only a well researched writer with an ear for dialogue, knowledge of history and politics, and emotional sensitivity for relationships that exist between a man and a woman, a child and a parent, a teacher and a student can write about.

In the past, when I wanted action and intrigue in a novel, I had to sacrifice good writing and emotional depth, but with Mathews, I sacrified nothing but time that it took to read the book. If you love well written political thrillers, if you want a fresh voice with a new outlook and and an intelligent voice, get this book and watch it climb the ladder to a number one best seller which this book will soon become!

I can't say it any better than sharing a copy the an e-mail I sent to Francine Mathews:

A book store owner friend gave me an advance reading copy of The Cut Out. This genre by a woman? Please.

I began to read only because I felt an obligation to my friend. But in first ten pages, you pounced, then rocketed me through a wonderfully plotted, beautifully written story that I, as a published novelist, found myself enjoying with exceeding envy. The Cut Out is one of those rare novels that cause me to ration my reading time so it lasts as long as possible. Thank you for the great trip! And if Bantam will spend the marketing dollars this project deserves, you're going to move to a "Ludlumesque-type" level in your career.

No doubt, author Francine Mathews knows her stuff when it comes to forming a well-tuned spy novel - as previous reviewers have mentioned, her experience (as a former employee of the CIA) shows.

However, from start to finish, I felt like I was watching (reading) a spy story made by the Lifetime channel. Caroline, aka Mad Dog (which made me think of the horrid, cheap wine the entire time I'm afraid), seemed to go from shocked and devastated widow to suddenly G.I. Jane at end of the book.. and then back to tough analyst while laying in a hospital bed. Her husband Eric seemed to be nothing more than a cardboard cutout (no pun) of a tough guy. And the ending was something I would expect out of some kind of sad and dramatic Lifetime show.

Mathews has potential, but this novel is not something I can see pleasing many previous spy novel fans. Her knowledge of tradecraft and the intelligence community reflected in the book, but her characters are overly cliche and dramatic. If you're new to the genre and want an okay read, then try this novel out. Otherwise, I would suggest something else.