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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jake Gyllenhaal. He's seen something that could get him killed. But what? Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he's been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it's just a job: he never asks who's paying him and why--until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this--or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As he's forced into a lethal dance across Vienna, Freddie knows one thing for sure: his only hope for survival is keeping the truth from the other side, and making sure the secrets from his past stay hidden.… (more)
User reviews
Freddie is a surveillance expert who has been tasked with watching the activities of a Chinese national in Vienna. He has come to know Cheng's habits intimately, but one day he returns home early to find his apartment being trashed and he barely escapes with his life just managing to kill his attacker with a steam iron. His boss is clearly terrified then he is also killed and Freddie realizes it's time to hide. So he does in the place least likely to be suspected and in plain sight.
Things get complicated as they usually do, and Freddie's determined not to kill anyone, the reason for which is gradually determined. Freddie also happens to have numerous skills that he had preferred to leave unused and hidden.
Good story that moves forward nicely. I will read more Wignall.
The strength of this book as a work is in its pacing, which is superb, constantly driving the action forward. But there is, for this reader, a disappointing weakness toward the final chapters when Wignall contrived an ending of unnecessary convolution after the proper ending had already been signalled by slightly earlier events. While there are justifications for what Wignall does, they are unequal, IMO, to what plot logic and "trueness" demand. If I offer more by way of explanation, spoilers will be necessary. So, I'll back away and give freedom to astute readers to decide for themselves if an otherwise totally absorbing read really is "as good as it gets."
In sum: To Die in Vienna is worth the price and worthy of your time. Wignall is the closest working spinner of this type yarn whose talents approach the level of The Master we have no more. John le Carre.
I especially liked the twist (hiring spy that does not know language of actual information he is chasing).
Very good novel, highly recommended to all fans of thrillers and espionage.
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| 823.92 |