Ray Hubley > Recent Status Updates

This is a haunting and captivating book. Enigmatic and deeply moving -- a little inscrutable, perhaps.

Superior espionage thriller with a rich historical context, dexterous plotting and an awful lot of Gauloise cigarette smoke.

Quite a show: raucous and rich in detail of a New York that hasn't quite disappeared. For me, a fine introduction to a writer I've been hearing about for a long time but never read.

Slim and chilling -- perhaps a bit diluted in translation?

Fascinating book, written from a few perspectives that brings a reasonably familiar voice to contemporary territory. The mood is electric and the tension strikingly present. Cold War fiction played out in the present tense.

Elegant, literate, Czarist nostalgia. Like reading
450 pages of The Little Prince.

Not bad of its kind

A remarkable book worthy of multiple readings and while I don't speak Danish and couldn't really assess, reads like a great translation.

O'

Absolutely execrable. Easily the worst piece of mainstream popular fiction I've witlessly dragged myself into in the past five years or more. Run for your life!

A powerful fable built from the mesh of history and human longing. Gripping, thought provoking and breathtakingly well-crafted.

Definitely grew on me as I paged through it. Was of half a mind by the end to start right back at the beginning and neatly did. Still a bit uneven, and while generally moving, occasionally sentimental.
Lastly, the evocation of London itself (a sixth character, almost) is both heartfelt and persuasive — possibly the book’s defining element.