I sometimes pick up books outside my comfort zone in order to try something new. This was one such story. It is a spy novel, as the tagline rightly claims. It is also a little more than that because we have a person who usually has a desk job decide to do something extraordinary to stay with the woman he has fallen for.
Oliver does not want to leave Columbia, but his higher-ups have decided that peace has come to the country and most active intelligence operatives should be moved to places with a higher possibility of terrorism. Unable to explain his actual job to the woman he is seeing and reluctant to part with, Oliver finds himself doing something extraordinarily crazy. He decides to make up his reports, finding it surprising how easy it is to make up reports where no fact-checking is required.
He is not having the last laugh, though, because it looks like his fabricated intelligence has a life of its own and everything seems to be happening at cross purposes. The chaos was entertaining. There were a few scenes I appreciated the humour in what the author was trying to do.
The writing was simple and straightforward, making fun of the bureaucracy at higher levels and what the ‘minions’ have to deal with.
It was a fun book in a city with politics that I have only a faint understanding of. There is a lot of action towards the end, and the pacing was pretty easy to read. I would recommend this book to readers who find this review or the blurb interesting because it is a different story than my more common reads and, for that, worth the effort.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 