The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson

This book is the first espionage book that I have read. Sure we could talk about the John LeCarre novel that I "read" for a class in college. And if by "read" you mean "forced yourself through at 3am at the Waffle House on College Avenue". So maybe I'm just not one for spy novels, but I didn't love this book. That being said there were part that I really enjoyed.

The main characters of the book, 20 year old Andrea Aspinall who is an English mathematician and Karl Voss, a double agent, meet in Lison in 1944. A lot of the this part of the book revolves around the atomic bomb and who has what information and who is selling what to who to get that information. The two meet and instantly fall in love....love at first site....perhaps...slightly unbelievable...perhaps. After a night of violence the two are separated from each other. Andrea stays in the Lisbon area and Karl is sent back to Germany having been discovered as a double agent. We follow Andrea through her time in Lisbon back to England onto Cold War Berlin and back again. Her friends and family are all keepers of secrets that she finds out along the way.

I thought that some parts of the book were very exciting as if I was watching it in a movie, including a fantastic chase scene through the streets of Lisbon and a meeting with 'The Snow Leopard' in Berlin. I think if you are fan of espionage thrillers than this would be a good book for you....as for me, I didn't like it as much as the first two books I read and I have to have some kind of scale and not be a total book whore...so I give it three stars.