Customer Reviews

A Spy's Life (Large Print) (Paperback)

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

 

 

I read the synopsis for this book in Vanity Fair, which highly recommended it. It was only after I had started it I learned the author is the editor for British vanity Fair. That being said it is for the most part an enjoyable espionage thriller. When Robert Harland's U.N. plane crashes in the waters right beside LaGuardia airport he is the sole survivor. Rescued by a bizarre technological stroke of luck, he has only just returned home, when a man show up on his doorstep claiming to be his son; The result of an affair he'd had years before with a Czech woman when he was a spy for the British. What this man has to tell him combined with the crash which Harland believes may have been sabotage,begins to unravel an unsettling and intricately plotted novel that moves from Manhattan to the streets of London, to the war torn fields of Bosnia. I thought Henry Porter created some wonderfully drawn characters, mainly Harland's caring sister, and the brilliant Tomas. I think plot wise I was just expecting a non stop fast paced thriller and instead this is a much more complex political chess game with bursts of action. But if you're a fan of authors like Robert Ludlam you'd probably really enjoy this.

When the UN plane crashed near LaGuardia Airport, Robert Harland quickly realizes he is in great danger of drowning, as the rescuers have no idea he was dumped into the nearby East River. He struggles over to where Alan Griswold reclines in a busted up seat, but finds his friend is dead. Robert's personal luck continues when Alan's cell phone rings. This enables Alan to inform the caller where he is. Robert takes Alan's wallet with him before the rescuers save his life.

As Robert recovers from his one in a fifty billion chance of survival, he learns what happened. Transportation blames it on physics, but the FBI hints at sabotage. UN Secretariat Jaidi asks Robert to learn why someone destroyed a plane, murdering officially ten people and unofficially eleven in order to kill Alan. Apparently, Alan had damaging information on someone. A former espionage agent, Robert agrees to uncover the truth even as a young man Tomas Rath comes into his life claiming to be his son through a liaison over two decades ago with Czech Eva Houresh.

Rarely does a novel start off as exciting as a SPY'S LIFE does. Henry Porter never eases up on the throttle from his first page in the East River to the final overseas confrontation. The espionage thriller is very complex though it appears to contain an unnecessary spin or two too many. The cast is developed so that readers appreciate Robert as a fabulous lead character while those who seem on the hero's side and his enemies round out a strong tale of international intrigue.

Harriet Klausner

Perhaps I'm just getting old and jaded but with this novel I felt that I not only had to suspend my disbelief, I had to take my disbelief out behind the shed, bind it, gag it and inject a tranquilizer. The first half of the novel lurches from one improbable scene to the next. I can forgive a novelist for one or two amazing coincidences or unlikely plot developments but on nearly every page of the first half of this book I found myself saying "A real spy wouldn't do that" or "That would never happen". The second half, however, settles into a conventional but competent thriller.
In all, a modestly enjoyable conspiracy-driven thriller.

A very good spy story with lots of twists and turns, a love story and the up turning of an unknown son. There is lots of shooting and death for those with a bloody bent and an airplane crash that is the centre of a sabotage investigation. The plot line centres on the competition amongst spy organizations in different countries in the investigation by the UN of an ethnic cleansing burial site in the former Yugoslavia. A nice twist at the end, a believable protagonist in Robert Copeland and a ruthless sadistic enemy that stretches Copeland's many talents.

While I enjoyed most of the book the last 100 pages tended to drag and the involvement of the various good and bad guys got very complex. 3.5/5

What frustrated and disappointed me was Robert Harlands sloppiness. Harland, a former British spy, was suspicious from the get yet kept making careless stupid mistakes over and over. That, after the first two, was inexcusable, imho. His sloppiness caused his sons death which reeeeally pissed me off cuz I liked Tomas Rath and was looking forward to a whole book with him in it. Grrrrr. Other than that I enjoyed reading this book and am looking into reading his 'Brandenburg Gate'. 'Empire State' sounds stupid so will skip it. Also will skip 'Remembrance Day' after reading the Publishers Weekly and Chris Fogarty's review.

However I do not read an espionage genre on regular basis, more exactly - I read it very rarely, this book has got me totally. Thrilling from the very first paragraph it has consumed my entire weekend. I simply could not leave it and let it be a bed-side reading. I have picked it randomly from a box of english books I have received from someone leaving my country back to the US and every other book I have picked up afterwards was a pure disappointment in a comparision with this one.
The plot is great and refreshing, the style is dynamic and the construciton of book is thirilling. Beside being an enormously convincing post cold-war espionage book, I have appreciated the job the author has done as for the local specifics described in book. As long as I come from on of the countries the book takes place in and as long as these central-european countries are usually described in a ridiculous, far from reality way, Mr. Porter has bothered himself to do a research, to check the probability of local names and places (authors, when writing about the post-communist countries often tend to name their heroes Boris and Yelena, forcing them to live in towns sounding like in XY-kovo and let them standing all their days in the queues to get a bread and potatoes, thinking that giving the contex a typical russian coherency of the 70ties spices the book with the sprinkle of authenticity) and together with the plot he has made the book so persuasive I have started to look over my shoulder to check whether or not I'm being observed by a spy.
But first and foremost he has convinced me the espionage genre (and the espionage itself) has not died with the end of a cold war.

Spy's Life is a very enjoyable espionage thriller. Robert Harland, a former British spy, begins the novel by surviving a plane crash only to realize that this is the least of his worries. Key events in this spy's life have come back to haunt him and now he is not only fighting for his life, but the lives of his loved ones. Great political intrigue, I especially liked the use of the United Nations in the novel.

Can't wait for the sequel 'Empire State'.

I must agree with some of the other reviewers that this one is good, not great. Parts of it are too implausible, and other parts dragged on way too long. Halfway through I had to put the book down for a few months and regain my strength before finishing. It was only pure perseverance, not enthusiasm, that made me finish it. The end was actually well done, but it took far too long to get there.

Henry Porter is a secret, but not for long. This is a relatively early book but already full of the layers of ambiguity, the polite, civilized savages who populate the spy world. and the total command of pace that makes his later books some of the very best of their kind. Get this, and if you like it go on to the brilliant BRANDENBURG GATE and BELL RINGERS. Porter is a serious talent who also happens to be a great entertainer.