Given how lauded this book was when it debuted in 2009, I had high hopes for this one, but I felt very "meh" about the whole experience. Perhaps I've seen too many spy movies, but I really wasn't very impressed. My heart did not race even once while reading, I was not worried about the life of the protagonist (it never hung in the balance), and I didn't really care about the outcome either way.

That said, I think this was part of the originality of this novel: the reality of it. The protagonist is a mostly retired spy, so he's not going to have a bag of tricks up his sleeve to be thwarting those in pursuit left and right - he's out of practice. And he has something to lose, rather than nothing (he has a family, so he wants to be careful about how he handles situations). Plus, in real life, I'm sure there aren't gunfights on every corner, and men throwing themselves off of bridges (I'm thinking of the Bourne films, otherwise known as The Holy Grail because I love them so). So, in that respect, I found this novel quiet refreshing in its banality. Will I read another novel by Steinhauer? Probably not.