Agent Palmer

Finding something relevant in a book 20 years after I was supposed to read it seems par for the course.

Normally it is possible to argue with an inside dust jacket quote, but in this case, it’s improbable. “Spy Sinker is the crescendo climax of the six previous bestselling novels by Len Deighton–and it ties them all together.” Spy Sinker is the culmination of the six previous novels, but it’s so much more than that. In a way, Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match, Winter, Spy Hook, and Spy Line are the dots plotted on a graph in the Bernard…

Michael Crichton’s The Lost World is a melding of espionage, extinction, and evolution. It’s much more of a short story in scope than Jurassic Park is as a novel. But the tension and thriller aspects of the book make for a gripping read.

The first book in the second Bernard Samson trilogy feels much more serialized than the start of a trilogy. I wouldn’t suggest that you start with Spy Hook; however, it is the beginning of a compelling arc that provides more information for your personal dossier of Bernard Samson.

In All Families are Psychotic, author Douglas Coupland creates a sort of funhouse mirror of what family life is like. Sure, it’s often distorted and even frightening, perhaps, but there remains an element of our own truth staring back at us.