Tuesday, October 5, 2010

ONCE A SPY by Keith Thomson ***

Action packed adventure, bullets flying, cars stolen and bouncing off garbage cans. Blood and gore. Drummond is over 65 thought to have Alzheimers and his son Charlie went to pick him up dazed and confused. Before they even get out the nursing home door whatever secret agency Drummond used to work for found his sketch of something and now they both must be killed.

Very easy to read, follow and minimal names to learn. I have a bitch tho. Charlie is a gambler. He cashes checks up to 5 thousand and bets it all on one horse at Aqueduct. Now I don't know what day of the week it was, but generally the "pot" or total bets probably don't exceed 5 thousand in the win pool. Probably not. In this story his horse (he says long shot but beg to differ) came in third. I assume he bet to 'win'. Which puts that particular horse as the favorite: $5,000 to WIN. I mean, probably 1:1 odds or something ridiculously small. But since the horse lost the winner was a far distant odds horse and probably paid BIG TIME to win (that sizable $5,000 pool) and surely wasn't the favorite. Writer states the 'favorite' was second after a long shot. Well after Charlies' $5,000 bet they ALL were long shots.

Putting the gambling aside...good story, like the writing style, the ease of scenes from one to the next. I wonder if Drummond is really losing it or faking. I'm at the end; one never knows who has memory issues and who doesn't. It's pages and pages of Charlie and Drummond running from killers. That's it. Everyone's a traitor, every "secret" place they run to has more killers. It gets monotonous. There isn't anything authentic about it either, so after awhile it's cartoonish. The end was unsatisfying.

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