Review: Foreign Agent

Foreign Agent by Brad Thor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thor's definitely got a gift for high action, but when it comes to storytelling, I got a pretty strong sense of "been there, done that" from Foreign Agent. I mean, you can only do so many stories about ISIS and Russian terrorists before you start turning your one-story-a-year series into so much 24 on repeat. Not to mention the fact that this book takes place largely overseas, thus making it feel a bit detached compared with some of Thor's other recent books involving major threats on American soil (movie theater shootings, Ebola outbreaks, and the like.) But that's why the high action is there, to balance this book's storytelling pitfalls. Never mess with Scot Harvath, that's a rule of the book world.

Also, this is probably the first book I've read that features a black site in, of all places, Malta. As much as I don't want to believe the land of my mother's mothers would include a black site, let's face it, there are probably more out there than we even realize anyway. And at least there's a nice little scene, in between the usual black-site business, where Harvath gets to sample the local fare. It's only because my mom hates fish, probably, that I've never had aljotta before.

While I've had a bit of a hard time finishing books with my usual speed lately, I'm happy to say that for this one, the usual fast-moving Harvath adventure translated to another fast read.

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