Customer Reviews

Spy Game (Five Star Expressions)

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A decade ago the parents of half-French, half-Algerian Ani Sharif were murdered while attended a girls' school in Algiers. Wanting to enact vengeance, but not knowing how, she obtains undercover work for the United States Security Agency, who knows her background makes her perfect for the SPY GAME.

Ani is initially assigned low skill non classified office work until now. Her first field assignment is to learn who is betraying the country by selling Department of Defense cyber secrets to foreign agents. Her superiors have firm evidence that the traitor works for defense contractor Rexford Inc. in Silicon Valley with the prime suspect being Richard "Baby Rex" Rexford. Ani obtains a programming position at Rexford and begins her efforts to hack into Richard's laptop where the proof is expected to be found. However, she finds much more as she falls in love with the man she believes is committing seditious and potentially deadly acts against the United States.

This is an entertaining espionage romantic suspense in which the cyber crime brings freshness to the plot. Ani is terrific as she wonders whether she could have fallen in love with a traitor as all the evidence points towards Richard as the seller of DOD secrets. Swift pacing and starring two strong lead characters, SPY GAME is a fun enjoyable thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Raised by two agents of the US Security Agency after her parents are murdered, Ani Sharif enters into the family business alongside her "sister" Linda. Usually pulling desk duty at the USSA, Ani is on her first undercover assignment - to infiltrate a defense contractor that has a mole leaking secrets. She is to gain the trust of CEO Richard Rexford who is not too happy that she has not only hacked into his highly encrypted firewalls, but has managed to purchase every dot com derivative of his company's name. But soon the big bad CEO is smitten with the hacker. Will Ani lose the man she loves when she reveals her true identity?

Writer Swift knows her geography and takes readers on a journey of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. But the promising story is stalled by cliched dialog, too many sub plots, and a predictable culprit that readers will see coming from the start. The spicy love scenes also seem a little out of place at times, and Ani's romantic history is typical of older romances novels - either heroines are virgins or born again after having a single unsatisfactory experience. I liked the idea of the story, but the revelation of the culprit, though obvious, was a little anti-climatic - it even takes place off the pages of the story and is told in narrative.

© Tracy Vest, August 2008

SPY GAME is a fast, fun romantic suspense that -- I hope -- will be one of many more from Sue Swift. I read this book in one gulp and couldn't put it down. Brava, Ms. Swift! Encore!