[.uk] Spy (ISBN 0743298985)

Just grows on you:
Never have I read a thriller as exciting as Ted Bell's Spy. The book is about Alex Hawke and how he discovered a terror camp in the Amazon forest. He was kidnapped by the terrorists there while he was on a mission. Later he escaped and the whole story starts off from there, in a series of chapters going back and forth between the plot threads, all magically heading towards the conclusion. I tell you this, no one I've seen has ever bond so many threads together in a smooth manner like this. It is just amazing. Pick up this book if you like action romps.

Awful:
Its pretty tough to take anything in this book seriously. Alex escapes the jungle camp, orders a 110' boat made that is magically finished complete with a billion dollar aegis combat control system (not generally available even to billionaires) with multiple missile launchers and other various deck gun. In two months. Yep those Italian boatyards must be really good. Johnny Quest needs one of these. The submarine weighs two tons. The size of a small car. With a 150 kt nuclear bomb. Heavily shielded with lead. Batteries large enough to run a sub (not light). Two tons....undetectable by sonar...how? The Texas deputy follows the truck carrying the submarine to Washington then calls his Sheriff? The Sheriff takes the call after just having been to a conference concerning terrorism and calls...nobody. He takes the first flight out instead. The book is full of absurd stuff like this. Oh and Ted you dont attach an M203 grenade launcher in combat, its already on. And it doesnt fire an rpg from the end of the barrel.

Super fun summer read!:
Now this is a fun book! It's 700 pages so it's not the quickest summer read, but a great thriller revolving around terrorist threatening the US from the jungles of the Amazon. Fun characters and past pace, could be a heck of a movie.

I couldn't finish this book:
I'm a fan of Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, and other authors of military/political/action fiction, and I read voraciously. In fact, I can't remember the last book that I didn't finish once I'd started it. But this stinker caused me to give up in disgust! The plot was SOOO stupid and contrived, and the characters were SOOO ridiculous and utterly unbelievable. I won't repeat the inane plot lines, as other reviewers have already pointed out the worst parts. Suffice to say, after the first couple of chapters, I thought, "this just has to get better". About half way in, I thought, "I'll give it one more chapter". Finally, I'd had enough and threw the book away! If you're a fan of complex plots and nested sub-plots, political scheming, high-tech military jargon, and amazing heroes, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! You will be disappointed ... I know I was.

Tedius to read, unbelievable plot:
The author of this book has two tricks--flashbacks and jumping from one scene to another--and uses them over, and over and over. Someone will be at a meeting and flash back to walking into the building where the meeting is. For no apparent reason. The book jumps from one location to another, seemingly randomly. Plot points stretch the limits of logic. I couldn't force myself to be interested in it enough to keep reading to the end. I can't figure out why anyone would like this book except if they really liked the idea that Mexico and all of Latin America pose a terrorist threat to the US. There's a reason why people are selling copies of this book for one cent.