Today I’m reviewing The Good Spy Dies Twice audiobook by Mark Hosack and narrated by him as well!
While I really enjoyed this book, I felt that it was a little off in a lot of ways. The storyline of Jake trying to figure out what his wife was doing on their honeymoon, especially after she died was interesting. He figures out she had never let the past go and was still looking for her dead fiance’s killer. There is a lot of mystery and intrigue to the story, but I don’t think I enjoyed the way it turned out/developed.
The first thing to really confuse me was the back and forth from present to past without any warning. And the dream sequences Jake had. There should have been some tone or perhaps sentence to say what was happening. The second thing was that Jake broke his back, or legs, or cracked his spine. All three were mentioned. Yet he never had a cast. And he could walk….yeah that seems extremely unrealistic. Even if in the book it was described as him walking poorly, I still don’t think it’s possible. The last thing to bug me was while the reader for the story was great, he did women voices poorly. Super duper poorly. They all sounded the same except the ones with Russian accents strangely enough. All the men had a wide variety of voices, yet the women just sounded like the same frustrated person over and over. It got annoying after a bit.
As for the story itself I am not a fan of the mystery. Claire goes off on her own during the honeymoon to do investigations that Jake doesn’t have privilege to. Instead of telling him some lie, she just tells him he’ll fuck up anything if she tells him. She lets him worry the whole time that she is cheating on him, that she is doing something illegal, or that she is investigating something dangerous and not related to the honeymoon article. When did Claire have time to bug all the rooms? Jake was with her a lot of the time in the beginning until he got mad that he lost her on the slopes and got drunk. If she had been in the hotel surely someone would have told him, so where in the two days that they were there before she died did she have time to plant listening devices in each room? The code that the painter left in her painting made nonsense. I listened to that section twice trying to follow Jake’s logic. Obviously he was of sound mind as he was able to find the spy’s name, but if so why does the explanation for the code not pan out? I wish that had been better explained. Then the whole the least obvious person is the betrayer thing really bugged me. He apparently loved her, yet killed her? Ok…sure…makes perfect sense…
I think this story gets credit for super interesting premise and fun scenes where Jake is doubting himself with all the mind games being played. But the follow through was just off. There are supposedly more books in the series. I’m certainly intrigued to find out if they all follow Jake. And if they do, hopefully there are more answers than questions given to us in these subsequent books.
In the end I would rate the story a 4/5 or a 7/10 on my scale. And the narration a 4/5 or 8/10 on my scale.
If you’d like to check this out on Audible for free trial click on the link below for easy access. It’s $21.95, 1 credit with Audible account or $14.95 at a discount. If you’re more a fan of reading on your kindle it’s $2.99.
The Book Addict's Reviews 
Leave a Reply