Customer Reviews

The Flight of the Falcon: The True Story of the Escape and Manhunt for America's Most Wanted Spy

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I honestly could not put this book down. It was fascinating. Christopher Boyce, convicted spy, escaped from prison and managed to elude the police for something like 18 months! Whoa! Robert Lindsey, who also wrote The Falcon and the Snowman about Boyce and Daulton Lee's actual crimes and trials, came to know Boyce after his incarceration and recounts the events as told to him by Boyce without bias but with a keen, critical eye. A truely fascinating book.

You know how this book is going to end, but despite that, it is impossible to put it down - as long as you make it to the last third. The beginning 20 pages tells the tale of Chris Boyce's escape from prison (He is the former USSR spy brought to fame by the movie "Falcon and the Snowman.") The next 180 pages or so starts off well but then bogs down as it presents all the false-leads that law enforcement got stuck with in their going-nowhere-fast manhunt for him over the next 12-18 months. The final third presents Boyce's perspective of where he was hiding until they caught him at the end, and although you know it will end in his capture, it is an amazing and addictive read.

As a humorous aside, I love the idea of FBI agents and US marshalls driving around Port Angeles WA in the summer of 1981 looking for him, openly drinking cans of beer as they drive around town. Federal law enforcement officials drinking AND driving simultaneously on a national manhunt. How times have changed. Did you have to drink from an open container as you drove around Port Angeles in 1981 in order to maintain your cover as a federal agent?

The follow-up to The Falcon And The Snowman was just as fascinating and well written. It was a very personal look at many interesting characters - good guys, bad guys and many in between.

For about two years I have had this thing for reading true escape stories. The Flight of the Falcon is one of the best. It's a story about a smart, young, convicted spy and his escape from prison. I give it only four stars because the author kind of went over board on the whole "follow the false leads" thing. For 18 months they got thousands of leads that went absolutely nowhere and Boyce was well on his way to freedom. But the play by play accounts of each false lead was redundant and tedious. Lindsey took a gamble with that and won.....in my opinion. All the redundancy paid off in a big way with a truly exciting escape story.

Only seven reviews so far and three or four people say they couldn't put it down.

I couldn't put it down either. I literally read it all in one sitting---staying up all night.

It must be some kind of masterpiece of the genre. Hell of an achievement for a sequel (to The Falcon and the Snowman, which I read afterward at a normal pace).

(Oddly enough, reading up on Boyce lately I don't find him an interesting or compelling figure in himself. He used to remind me a bit of Christopher McCandless.)

I picked this book up in a used book store, and read it in less than a day. I couldnot put it down! At first, I almost felt sorry for Christopher Boyce, but once he started robbing banks to support himself, forget about it. I wonder if today, in July of 2000, if he is still as bitter towards both the government and the CIA

I didn't care about the red herrings the investigators were following. I just wanted to know what Boyce was really doing. So I read only those parts of the book. Those parts were quite interesting.

Great! I am 15 and have just discovered this great book. My mother had owned it it was about my uncle Duke Smith. Duke his nick name. the book was great a must to read.