Twice a Spy

By Keith Thomson

Doubleday

ISBN: 978-0-385-530-79-8

3.75 stars

I can be a sucker for a thriller/spy novel and when I was contacted about reviewing this one, I agreed.  It has been a good minute since I read a book like this and I do try to step out of my comfort zone when possible.

Charlie Clark is a gambler, a wiz with math but he still can’t win with the horses, so he goes on the run with his girlfriend Alice, who just happens to a NSA agent, and his father Drummond Clark who in fact was a spy but is now suffering from Alzheimer’s.  The interesting thing about Drummond is that when necessary, he can recall his old spy skills which help them get out of a few situations that would have left anyone but Drummond Clark dead.  In Twice a Spy, the plot revolves around a washing machine which is actually a nuclear bomb and a group of terrorists trying to get their hands on it.

This is the second book in an obvious much larger series waiting to happen.  I didn’t read Once a Spy, the precursor, so at times I did feel slightly lost but not because of the story which is easy enough to follow but because I didn’t feel as though I knew these characters well enough.  There’s an interesting camaraderie going on between Charlie and his father but I felt there might have been more about that in the first book.  It transferred well enough but since I’m the type of person that likes to read books in order, it could very well have been my sub-conscience being annoyed at me for not reading the first.

Drummond is a particularly interesting character though and I enjoyed seeing him pull up spy tactics as if he were watching a movie.  The plot, while there, is thin but that’s all right.  It’s a book about terrorist and a bomb so it has all the elements and it moves.  And I mean it moves fast.  The chapters are short.  Dialogue is short.  It’s pretty much non-stop action which is what you expect in a book of this nature.  I don’t know if it’s a series I would continue with, but I thought this installment was a good fast read.

This book was sent to me by the publisher for review.