(As one puts it almost flippantly, 'Secrets are cool.') One character is the story's requisite thug, but you get the impression he's a complete poser.

Some of his players have backgrounds in intelligence and counter-intelligence, and are motivated by powerful moral imperatives. He pulls it off here with much greater clarity than in, say, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Given its subject matter, you'd expect it to have a greater sense of consequence.Īs he's done before, Gibson brings together disparate groups of people with conflicting agendas, whose multiple narrative threads are tied together strand by strand as the tale progresses. It's an entertaining yarn, but by Gibson's standards, one that feels featherweight. Nor does Gibson have much new to say about the way in which the world has changed - its political and moral landscapes - in the years after 9/11. The book's title promises all manner of spy-vs-spy goodness, but that isn't really what we get. But I gleaned some real pleasure from the treatment Gibson gives his characters here, many of whom literally stumble into the plot's unfolding drama and have to figure out what's going on by the seat of their pants. In the end it feels like much ado about nothing. Mom and apple pie are not really threatened in any meaningful way. The fate of the world isn't exactly at stake. Spook Country is a strange book, in that I enjoyed it despite the fact I never felt much of a sense of danger or nail-biting suspense.

Spook Country by William Gibson