It has taken three and a half of 7 CDs for this story to be remotely interesting and just when it appeared to be getting interesting it wandered off in a different direction.

Listening to an affected European (French maybe) accent, while driving, did not help and even if this was not a problem I don’t think the book would make my top ten for 2010.
( )

Some genres are automatically associated with certain authors. If I say "tough private eye novel," several names might come to mind--Raymond Chandler, Robert Parker, Dashiell Hammett or Sara Paretsky, to name a few. If I say "Western," you might think of Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour. But if I say "spy novel," most people are bound to think of one author in particular--John LeCarre. (Ian Fleming doesn't count--he wrote adventure/fantasy novels with a spy protagonist, not the complex works infused with moral ambiguity that are modern spy novels.)

From now on, when I hear "spy novel," I'll also think of Alex Carr.

AN ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN is about Nicole Blake, who's trying to live a quiet life on a mountain farm in France after doing time for counterfeiting in a women's prison in Marseille. Her contented existence is disrupted by the appearance of John Valsamis, a U.S. intelligence operative who wants Nicole to find her former lover, Rahim Ali, because he's believed to be a terrorist. With a few photos of terrorist bombing victims (and one of Ali meeting with a known terrorist), Valsamis persuades Nicole to help him. But, of course, Valsamis is not telling her everything--and Nicole is going to find that out the hard way.

Read the whole review at http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com/2008/12/accidental-american-is-awesome-spy.html ( )

A Lebanese woman with an American father is recruited to locate her former lover by a dodgy CIA agent - and has little choice in the matter. Evocative and twisty, it's a good but not great prelude to the 2008 publication, Prince of Bagram Prison, which is stunningly good.

http://literaryfeline.blogspot.com/2007/10/accidental-american-by-alex-carr.html ( )

I wasn't paying attention when the Beirut Embassy Bombing of '83 (the core of the plot of this book) took place. In fact only recently have I begun to learn about the world outside the US, a deficit I regret and which definitely leaves me unprepared to read books like this. For that reason it's possible this book deserves a higher rating.

Addressing only what I feel qualified for, I liked the mix of first and third person. I didn't mind the jumps forward and back in time. The slow unfolding of the plot seemed right, as at times the most gripping action was internal, in the minds of the characters.

On the other hand, the characters felt like types or even symbols to me. (With the exception of Valsamis: he seemed like a grade-b spy novel bogeyman. Ick.) I don't think anyone really acts like the characters in the book did, but the *idea* of a woman who has lost everything but an echo of her ideals, a lover whose only crime is her youth, an old man almost welcoming his death - these are all blocks AC uses to build the tale. But it's not enough for me; if characters don't feel like individuals I nod off.

Still, I also nod off when books are outside my experience and comprehension, and this is what I felt like here - as though I was a beginning student borrowing my older sibling's honors textbook. ( )