Agents of Treachery

By Otto Penzler and Peter Altschuler

Book Overview

For the first time ever, legendary editor Otto Penzler has handpicked some of the most respected and bestselling thriller writers working today for a riveting collection of spy fiction. From first to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307477517
• ISBN13: 9780307477514
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 429 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A great collection of short stories

I wasn't sure how to rate this one. As a book overall I wanted to give it a three because the stories were all (too) short, but then this is a collection of short stories, so it wouldn't be right to penalize the book because each of the stories were not of novel length, right? I can't remember the last time I read a collection of short stories so it's hard to compare, but as a collection this book might deserve a five. I took the easy way out and gave it a four. Every one of these stories was good, some better than others. The first was one of my favorites. The last story was one I had trouble following in the beginning, but started to catch on just before the whole thing turned upside down. I'm glad I stuck with it because it turned out to be one of the most memorable with multiple twists and turns. EDIT: I changed my mind. I'm going to give it a five. I'd rather read a full novel than a short story. As short stories though, this was a good collection. And I just noticed that my review showed up for the paperback version. I bought and read this on my Kindle. I wonder what that's about?

To Catch A Spy

In this baker's dozen of espionage stories by master spy writers, the reader is slipped like a clever listening device inside the pockets of spies, jihadists, and traitors plying their trade in world capitols from New York to Hamburg to Nairobi, and in a few out of the way places like Chesapeake Bay and rural Norfolk. In London, an unhappily married Cold War ordnance officer selling bogus information to the Russians is about to be exposed as a traitor when his hooker girlfriend neatly steps in to solve his problems. In the tiny African country of Ndala, an American operative carrying one hundred thousand dollars in cash and indeed "wondering why [he is] . . . not yet dead," observes the assassination of a petty African dictator. In Hamburg, an aging spy at the end of his career uses all his craft to elude his employers in his mission to reveal trade secrets of torture to the press. Treachery, graft, cowardice, heroism, naiveté, and amorous attachment can mean torture and death in these gripping tales of intrigue in which plots twist and turn with all the deviousness of a well-kept secret. Reviewed by Zara Raab

good with reservations

The benefit of short stories is that, well, they're short. A few in this collection, like the tales by Lee Child and Joseph Finder, are. A couple are rather long. Each is worth your time. Occasionally there is an O. Henry-like ending that is always fun. A good summer read.