The Amateur

by Robert Littell, Scott Brick (Narrator)

With last year's publication of his New York Times bestseller The Company, Robert Littell reestablished his position as one of our top writers of intelligent, ironic, and always entertaining espionage thrillers. After many years The Amateur, a cult classic among aficionados, is finally available again as Overlook republishes Littell's best.

In this "first-rate thriller" (Chicago Tribune), Charlie Heller is an ace cryptographer for the Company. He's a quiet man with a quiet job in a back office. But when terrorists shoot his fiancée in cold blood and Heller learns that the Agency has decided not to pursue those responsible, his life takes an abrupt turn. He was not a blackmailer but he will force the CIA's hand. He was not an assassin but he will penetrate the Iron Curtain with the intent to kill. Driven by an obsessive need for revenge, targeted for elimination by the CIA itself, Heller is an amateur with a one-in-a-million chance of success.

Author Biography: Robert Littell is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, published in twelve languages around the world. His most recent, the New York Times bestseller The Company has just been published in paperback by Penguin. A former Newsweek journalist, Robert Littell was born in New York.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Espionage, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Crime

Audio Cassette

First published May 15, 1981

About the author

An American author residing in France. He specializes in spy novels that often concern the CIA and the Soviet Union. He became a journalist and worked many years for Newsweek during the Cold War. He's also an amateur mountain climber and is the father of award-winning novelist Jonathan Littell.

Reviews

[♥Milica♥]

Just watched the movie, I had no idea this was a book, otherwise I would've read it beforehand, I'll read it at some point though.

[Terence M [Quot libros, quam breve tempus!] · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-Stars for "The Amateur" - apparently "I Really Liked It "
Review to follow (2018)
Edit: September 21, 2025:
Sorry for not writing a review in 2018😐. I do not remember listening this audiobook, but if I rated it 4-Stars, I must have enjoyed it, so I have shelved it as "Hear Again" in 2025🙂!
Published: 1981 (Paperback); 2003 (Audio Cassette); Acquired: 2017; Heard: 2018 (Audio CD).

[Joe Newell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just about a five star. 4.5 for sure.

I found this book as a recommendation either from the Library web site or here at Good Reads, not sure which. I had never even heard of Robert Littell. Apparently he has written some good and popular books; this being one of them.

In a quick summary, a cipher geek (this was 1971, so todays equivalent of a computer nerd) falls into a situation where some bad people do something bad to someone he loves. Mr Computer/Cipher geek decides that even though he's an amateur, he's going to do his best impression as a professional assasin and hunt down those who are responsible.

Not a unique idea for sure, but Mr. Littell does a fine job of telling this story. He also does well with character development, and has some nice plot twistys at the end. Bravo.

[Anjana V. Nair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up The Amateur as part of my “read it before I watch it” experiment, and while the concept pulled me in, the execution didn’t quite deliver the punch I was hoping for.

The setup is classic spy-thriller gold: Charles Heller, a quiet CIA codebreaker, loses his fiancée in a terrorist attack and demands justice. When the agency refuses to act, he blackmails his way into fieldwork, determined to kill the killers himself. That transformation - from analyst to assassin - should be the heart of the book. But weirdly, it’s the part that feels the most rushed.

There are strong moments. Littell clearly understands CIA culture and Cold War dynamics. The bureaucratic resistance Heller faces in the first third feels chillingly real. And the early tension - the grief, the obsessive planning, the idea that a man trained only to analyze would dare to execute - is compelling.

But then it falters. Once Heller is in Europe, the tone shifts, and his emotional arc mostly flatlines. His kills come too easily. He receives improbable help from an East German agent (Elisabeth) whose motivations are murky at best. Their relationship veers toward something romantic, but there’s no real development… and by the time she’s taken hostage and dies in a cold, abrupt moment, it feels more like plot clearance than emotional weight.

The final twist: that Heller was manipulated by his own agency into carrying out hits they couldn’t sanction - should hit hard. But because Heller never truly feels like an amateur, and the book rarely pauses to explore his psychology, the twist reads more clever than tragic.

I’ll still watch the movie for comparison, but this was one of those reads where the idea was better than the experience. Smart premise, solid bones, but a bit emotionally hollow!

[JayP · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got over two thirds of the book completed and lost interest.
A major disappointment as there was no sense of a developing story-line or characters.
I rarely leave a book unfinished, but in this case I had to pull the pin.

[Kylie Hunsaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

From start to finish it was thrilling and had a good mystery.

[Mira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie Heller, the protagonist of The Amateur, is a cryptographer for the CIA. He is a quiet man with top-secret clearance who spends his days happily mucking around with math and loving his fiance, Sarah. This all changes when Sarah is taken hostage in a terrorist attack and publicly executed. First, he grieves. Then, he seeks revenge.

Heller’s not a field agent — he’s an egghead at a desk. The CIA will have to mount an operation to pursue, and Heller won’t be involved. Unfortunately, the CIA is not on board. The terrorists have retreated to Czechoslovakia. Legally, they can’t be touched. They’ll watch and wait, they tell Heller. Beyond that, their hands are tied.

Heller won’t take no for an answer. Because of his position as the the Company’s best cryptographer, he has access to hundreds — thousands — of the most sensitive communications ever to come through the CIA. He picks off a couple dozen of the worst of the worst and blackmails his employer. If they train him to go after the terrorists himself, he says, he’ll kill the terrorists who killed his fiance and deny that the CIA’s involved. If not, he’ll reveal the damaging messages to the public.

The CIA gives in to his blackmail and puts him through training. He prepares to go to Czechoslovakia in pursuit of the terrorists. But now that the plot is set in motion, it’s not just the terrorists who want him to fail. It’s the CIA, too.

This is an engaging, enjoyable read. The plot moves along at a sprightly clip and the not-very-surprising main developments get some color from unexpected details, like an art deco building shaped like a concrete nest and a subplot about analyzing Shakespeare for Baconian codes.

Unfortunately, I have one major nitpick. The description of Heller’s cryptographic work is totally misguided. Littell repeatedly describes how Heller cracks coded CIA messages in loving pseudo-technical detail, yet seems to think that all codes are essentially substitution ciphers. Which, nope. This would not be a problem except that these sections are obviously intended to establish Heller as a brilliant genius and to give the book as a whole some authority as a realistic portrayal of tradecraft, so getting it this glaringly wrong is pretty … glaring.

Ignore those bits and you’ll have a fun read.

[Trina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amateur extends to the writing of the book as well as the title. Mixing metaphors with cliches produces lines like these:
- “Plowing toward retirement like an icebreaker, the lady Consul General half raised her right hand and asked in a voice ideally suited to recorded announcements, ‘Do you swear or affirm that you have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?’”
- “And the terrorists… They appeared out of the smoke and swirling dust like a medieval apparition, masked genies summoned up for the denouement of a passion play, Heironymus Bosch’s nightmarish vision of the guardians of hell.”
- “in the chancellery in Bonn the storm raged. Footsteps resounded through the long marble corridors of power…”
If that doesn’t make you appreciate the high art of spy fiction from le Carré and Furst, nothing will.

[Hana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Velice nadšeně jsem hltala stránky, které mě uvedly do socialistické Prahy a války KGB s CIA a československou kontrarozvědkou.

Nechyběl humor, sex a láska. Především ale kniha obsahuje šokující detailní postupy CIA, informace o zbraních a systému tak spletitého a podlého, že do něj pouhý smrtelník nemůže vidět.

Celá recenze na http://www.channach.com/robert-littel...

[Will Wilt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not put two and two together that I was picking up a book recently released as movie. I was pleasantly surprised at the now 40 year old spy-novel and can only hope the movie does it justice.

A story of love, loss, grief, revenge, and love again, Littell crafts an enjoyable spy drama.

Highly recommend.

[Darren Bourn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently had the opportunity to see the movie "The Amateur", starring Remi Malek, which came to theatres on 11 April 2025. I noticed in the credits that it was inspired by a novel by Robert Littell that had been released in May 1981. So I thought that I would take the opportunity to read the source material.

The Amateur (1981) was the first novel by prominent espionage thriller author Robert Littell. The major difference that I noticed between the movie and the novel, other than the fact that the movie was released forty-four years after the novel, is that the original story takes place in the early 1970s (during the years of Richard Nixon) when the major antagonist was the USSR and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The movie loosely follows the same plot, with the major differences that I noticed being that the antagonist is a group of terrorists (not backed by the KGB) and at least one of the means of death for the antagonists.

It follows a mild-mannered CIA cryptographer in the early 1970s who takes matters into his own hands when the Agency refuses to track down the terrorists who killed his fiancée. Relying on his need for revenge, the skills he hastily cobbled together in a CIA boot camp, and his love of patterns and codes, the cryptographer turns his amateur status into an asset.

Our protagonist is Charlie Heller, one of the best cryptographers at the CIA. Recruited after he published an essay in the Kenyon Review about patterns in the work of 18th-century diarist Samuel Pepys, Charlie now has Top Secret clearance status and spends his days breaking KGB ciphers and bantering with his coworker, a Russian crate expert. Quiet, scholarly, and not qualified for fieldwork, Charlie is happy in his back-office position. Outside of work, Charlie has two passions: his fiancée, Sarah Diamond, a globetrotting photographer, and his obsessive conviction that somewhere inside Shakespeare’s works is a cryptogram that will reveal their true author.

Sarah is taken hostage during a terrorist attack on a US Embassy in Germany. To secure their victory, the terrorists decide to execute a hostage. To spare the lives of others, Sarah volunteers that she is Jewish, prompting the attackers to murder her.

Charlie’s life is turned upside down with grief and mourning. At the funeral, he has an eye-opening conversation with Sarah’s father, a Holocaust concentration camp survivor who tells him that the only way he managed to overcome at least some of his trauma was through revenge. Killing a Nazi doctor when the camp was liberated, Sarah’s father says, “brought me back from the dead!” The CIA therapist Charlie is sent to see also agrees that vengeance has “therapeutic” properties.

Charlie demands that the CIA mount an operation to find and catch the three terrorists responsible. However, because they have crossed into Czechoslovakia, the killers are behind the Iron Curtain and thus unreachable by the US—legally, the only thing to do is wait for them to emerge.

Frustrated and furious, Charlie formulates a different plan—one where he, and not trained field agents, will be the one to go after the bad guys. Because of his security clearance, Charlie has access to lots of incriminating materials about CIA operations over the years. Choosing 25 or so of the worst ones, he stores them as encrypted files on his computer and uses them to blackmail the Agency. If they train him to find and overcome the terrorists himself, he will attempt to do so and will deny CIA involvement if caught. If they deny him, he will release the damning information he has squirreled away to the public.

The CIA agrees, and Charlie undergoes a rigorous, but sped up training course at “the Farm,” a special spy school. There, he gets to up his banter game with a disapproving but encouraging master spy instructor.

Finally, Charlie embarks on his mission. What he doesn’t know is that the CIA planted the original terrorists—led by a double agent whose covert status is so valuable that the CIA now wants to take Charlie out before he can unmask the whole operation. So, while Charlie makes his way through Czechoslovakia, he is being pursued by a consummate assassin sent by the Agency to take him out.

Aided by plot-breaking amounts of luck and coincidence, Charlie evades the assassin by virtue of being such an amateur at the spy game: He simply doesn’t know enough to follow Agency procedures, thus foiling the assassin’s plots and schemes.

When Charlie gets a lead that one of the terrorists involved, Gretchen, is the lover of a KGB agent, he puts himself into greater danger. Now, not only is the CIA assassin hot on his trail, but so are the KGB (tipped off by the CIA) and Czech authorities (because he doesn’t legally have authority to be there). The only person on Charlie’s side is former CIA agent Elizabeth, whose Czech poet husband was killed by KGB goons and who fills Charlie in on the cultural destruction wrought by Communism. As they work together, they develop romantic feelings for each other.

With Elizabeth’s help, Charlie finds and kills two of the terrorists: Gretchen and Joan Antonio. The climax of the novel is Charlie’s confrontation with the embassy attack’s mastermind Horst, a psychotic killer whose allegiances are extremely complex. He is a CIA agent whose role as a double agent for the KGB makes it unclear which side of the Cold War he is on. Moreover, Horst is the son of a man who used to be an informer for the Gestapo, explaining why the terrorists would target a Jewish hostage first.

The novel ends on a victorious note. Charlie kills Horst, finds love with Elizabeth, and in his downtime has managed to solve the mystery of Shakespeare’s authorship—it turns out it was Francis Bacon all along.

The movie stayed pretty true to the source novel, and as such, I would normally give the book a solid four stars, as I enjoyed the story, but the issue that I had with the copy that I read was that I found that the story bounced between what was going on and the references to one of the cipher "conspiracy theories" that he was pursuing in the first part of the book. As such, my self-determined rating drops to three and a half stars.

As with all my literary (and in the rare case, the movie review) ramblings, this is just my five cents.

[Joan W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who doesn’t love a little Cold War espionage action?!? Blackmail, revenge, skullduggery… bad actors… this was fun!
I must say though, the author’s penchant for referring to the main’s character’s “Mona Lisa” smile — did start to grate!

[SebastiAn Baglole · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved the intro and general concept for this book. So when the bottom dropped out a third of the way through and it toddled off into oblivion with no conceivable development of any kind, it was a serious disappointment.

Although it was fun to imagine a bunch of dudes in a deep squat pointing guns at each other in their "aim stance".

[John Schorg · Rating 2 out of 5]

It starts out OK, but gradually becomes more ludicrous as it goes along. After someone avoids getting killed because he changes his hat with someone else, it becomes obvious that cliche rather than logic will be the chief factor in advancing the plot. It will be interesting to see how much of all this will be retained in the upcoming movie.

[Iami Menotu · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cliche novel with bullet holes in the plot and lack lustre narration.

[Jake Chavez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as the movie

[LiteraryGamer · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️.75/5

Starting with a disclaimer: crime thrillers, or however you would describe a government espionage story, are not my thing. If I’d had the option, I would have opted out of reading this book, so I am going to be biased. That being said, the book was…fine. I was only bored when it got ‘technical’ about guns or CIA missions. This was written in 1981, so it was a little interesting to read about what the government was concerned with, namely, Russia and the Cold War.

The story is about Charlie, whose fiancée is murdered in a terrorist attack in Germany. Charlie is a code breaker for the CIA, and he is PISSED when the government decides not to pursue his fiancée’s killers. He decides to go rogue, blackmails the government into training him to kill, and is going to get his own brand of justice.

Along the way, he meets Elizabeth, a widow who does some work for the US Government. They pair up, and as Charlie tries to get revenge, the CIA tries to stop him. I have to say, the STORY part of the story was engaging and I really enjoyed it. It got a little weird now and then, random things characters will say that will make you tilt your head, but overall, it’s solid.

There’s a subplot where Charlie is trying to figure out who REALLY wrote Shakespeare’s plays, based on the theory that there is a hidden message in one of his works that reveals who the real author is. I didn’t care about any of that, so I admit I glazed over more than once when it came to certain sections of the book.

I’m not keeping this one; it would be like a game of ‘one of these things is not like the other’ on my bookshelf. It was a fast read, I’ll give it that, but it was barely a mid book. Check it out from the library if you’re interested. Or watch the movie; from the trailer, it looks like only the bare bones of the plot were used, so maybe it’s been modernized for the better.

[Star Shining Forever · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Revenge wasn’t sweet, it was bittersweet.”

Got interested in this due to the recent movie starring Rami Malek, who was perfect in the titular role of the CIA cryptographer and numbers man hunting for the terrorists who murdered his fiancee in a hostage situation.

The training and prepping takes up a good amount of time but the actual chasing of the bad guys disappointingly goes by in a flash. Plus the hero’s motivation reads a little stale as he & his love were together less than a year and you don’t really feel their passion, while he readily forms a sexual & emotional attachment with the ubiquitous native female contact. Her mixed metaphors and broken idioms as well as his subplot of deciphering who really authored Shakespeare’s works were fun. Tho I never wanna hear about a ‘Mona Lisa smile’ again lol.

This did remind me why I don’t really read political thrillers because of the bogus American exceptionalism & “we’re the good guys” mentality. At least it’s shown here there’s a bit more to the story.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this because I liked the movie that just came out (2025)... Similar to the movie, but some differences per usual! Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, but actually loved the movie more due to the cast (such a biased review- sorry)!

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Charlie Heller is a CIA cryptographer. Then his fiancée is murdered by terrorists and the Agency decides not to pursue them. He does.

[Pcd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent thriller, dating from the early eighties. Fun to read this book written towards the end of the cold war. The story’s of revenge, and it’s serviceable (as are the characters). My favorite part was a touch author Littell to the dialogue - wordplay on idioms and proverbial sayings. They weren’t always clever, but they worked. Under the guise of poor English, his female counterpart in Czechoslovakia delivers some humor. The crypto stuff is not very sophisticated, which is okay unless you’re a crypto geek. Not highbrow literary fiction, but still pretty fun.

[Ally Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had previously never read any of Robert Littell's spy thrillers but after seeing an enticing movie trailer of the same name, I picked up a second hand copy.
I was not disappointed. Littell writes with an authenticity surrounding the spy genre with particular focus on the CIA or as the central character, Charlie Heller, refers to it as the 'Byzantium'.
Beginning with a terrorist attack on a foreign consulate resulting in the assassination of a young American woman who just happens to be the fiancée of Heller.
Despite the 'Company' knowing who the three terrorist involved in the shooting are, Charlie, soon realises there is no movement towards tracking them down as they are now situated behind the 'Iron Curtain' in the former Czechoslovakia (the novel was first released in 1981).
Heller blackmails the CIA through his day job as a cryptographer with the result of receiving expert training as a spy leading to an incursion behind the curtain and in pursuit of the three terrorist involved in the murder of his fiancée. Fast-paced with many twists and turns this novel reaches an exciting climax as Charlie seeks revenge in order to truly live again.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A professional believes if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. An amateur believes if a job is worth doing, it very well may be worth doing badly

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll admit that I was introduced to this book through the trailer for the upcoming movie based on it in April. While the character backgrounds and overarching theme of revenge is the same, there are some differences given the geopolitical climate and backdrop of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, it's the same premise. Charles Heller is a cryptographer for the CIA with access to highly top secret intelligence. His fiancee, Sarah Diamond, is killed by KGB-sponsored terrorists when they take over the American consulate in Munich. Upset at the CIA's refusal to pursue the terrorists hiding in Czechoslovakia, he uses the knowledge of his position to blackmail the agency into giving him training and a mission where he kill the terrorists himself.

The book was quite enjoyable, and I finished it within three days. Other than a couple of lulls and an ending that's a bit confusing yet satisfactory, it's a fairly easy read that you can glide through. There are quite a few humorous quips that might yield a chuckle instead of an outright laugh. It's a great read if you like a loner protagonist on a mission. Compared to other spy novels, it doesn't focus too much on the agency's politics, and there's no grand geopolitical crisis, conspiracy, or patriotic messaging. It's just about a man wishing to enact justice for his murdered fiancee and is willing to break the rules to do just that.

Regarding the overall theme of revenge, it doesn't take the moral high ground on it. It illustrates the gritty reality of revenge and the somewhat therapeutic aspects, which is something not portrayed in today's superhero movies. Overall, a great book for someone wanting a more serious plot with a satisfying ending.

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was likely cutting edge when it was published in 1981 but is now woefully dated. I chose it because I liked the trailer for the upcoming movie. Aside from there being a CIA cryptologist wanting revenge after his wife is murdered by terrorists, the two stories appear to have nothing in common. This is a story about the Cold War at a time when computers were fairly rare and mysterious. The parts about cryptology were the most interesting.

The author’s attitudes about women are in keeping with his time. They serve to advance the plot or to be a romantic interest but aren’t integral to the story otherwise. The sex scenes are laughable. It’s preposterous that two grieving people would fall in love in a manner of days and that their lives would be so intertwined that the fate of the woman was the most important part of the man’s plan.

There was so much repetition to the point where there was no novelty left. The man asking for cigarettes, the woman mixing up her idioms - about half as many references would have been too much.

There’s a good chance I might have enjoyed this had I read it forty years ago. As it is, the movie looks like it’ll be the far better choice.

[Roberta Freeling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grabbed this book from the library after seeing an ad for the movie. Books are personal so I rarely write reviews, but this book was good all the way through. Characters well developed, plot twists well done and ending excellent. Then I googled any difference between the book & the movie. They changed so many main points!! Example - Henderson in the book is a CIA trainer with an agenda that is a huge plot point. In the movie he is the main character's boss??? Boss had huge separate part in the book. Found out another movie was made in 1981 - Canadian - that really followed the book. It was unfortunate that the main character in that movie wasn't that great of an actor. My recommendation - read the book 1st - it was great.

[Mabrouck · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'Amateur, de Robert Littel est un excellent roman d'espionnage, dans le contexte de la guerre froide. Un cryptographe américain dont la femme a été tuée dans un attentat à Berlin parvient à se faire envoyer en mission à Prague dans le but de liquider les terroristes qui s'y terrent. C'est génialement raconté, avec un humour et une dimension humaine qui font toute la différence entre un roman de gare et un petit bijou distrayant et stimulant.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this, in the end. It started to pick up when the main character finally began to get his revenge. Then he began to have a personality: before that he was just a government scribe. I especially liked the Czech intelligence officers, the neat solution to a Shakespeare mystery, and the very cool and satisfying ending. If only all secrets-spilling could be as neat.

[Thrillers R Us · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming BFFs with Goethe around the tender age of thirty, Friedrich von Schiller embarked on a journey that, much like the legendary gun fighter Doc Holliday, was stopped by tuberculosis nary seventeen years later and brought the revered esteem of future generations, proclaiming him as the numero uno German playwright of his era. Most people, including a slew of Germans, would probably be hard pressed to name one of Schiller's works, even though he often places second after Shakespeare as Europe's major dramatist. Bearing the distinct honor of being the first statue placed in Central Park in 1859, Schiller probably benefits from forever being associated with Beethoven's 9th symphony, having penned the words to the fourth movement's 'Ode to Joy'. A thorough professional and maestro of words, Schiller is called upon in 1981's THE AMATEUR to lend his surname to a German virtuoso of terrorism, tormenting Europe in the aftermath of the Baader-Meinhof era and in the frosty grasp of the ongoing Cold War deep behind the Iron Curtain.

Charlie Heller is one of the handful of men assigned to Division D of the Clandestine Service, in the most security conscious building in America. The CIA. A tiny bit higher than Top Secret unit that made ciphers and broke them and those of other countries, especially one-time ciphers that the NSA can't be trusted (content-wise) with are his jam. Charlie moves through life fast, as he figures that solves most problems. A hunt and peck typist just shy of thirty, he's unremarkable, married, with a Mona Lisa-like smile and constantly slipping eyewear. His workhorse is an IBM 7090, capable of 229,000 additions every second, and he loves to work alone. Even after 8 years with the Company, he still believes in truth, for the CIA is a civilized place as long as you keep the wrappings on. Don't stir up the dogs. But what happens when terrorist mastermind Horst Schiller plays by his own, dirty rules, and in a minute of madness changes Charlie's life forever?

Stuffed with tradecraft and intel community details, THE AMATEUR also spills the beans about the Farm at Camp Peary, fluttering, and the Langley CIA HQ a mere eight miles from Downtown Washington D.C. Though often found in modern mil-schlock pulp, for a thriller from 1981, this was novel. Fairly new at the killing business and prone to be very nervous, Charlie is the Farm's newest resident. It's one lowly programmer versus the seventh floor at Langley and, incidentally, the terrorists du jour of 1981 Europe. Faced with a man bent on revenge, off the books and NOC, the brass is in a hard place, trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. Thus, a simple cipher clerk, palindrome inventor, impeccably shabby Company man is training his head to accept violence as something not at all out of the ordinary. Fueled with the courage of his ignorance and carrying a grudge worse than Captain Kirk has for Khan, THE AMATEUR moves about in a world that was still divided on those who called it either an icebox or those who called it a refrigerator.

Working the 'perish and publish' angle borrowed and passed on to a gazillion shamus stories out there, if something happens to Heller, papers will be mailed to the papers, THE AMATEUR insists that the line between a dramatic rescue mission and catastrophe is a very fine one. Which one of these will ultimately be Charlie's fate is up for grabs, though where it all goes down is the mysterious city of Prague, for which THE AMATEUR reserves scathing commentary. As misery loves company, Heller naturally ends up with an unwitting foreign sidekick who keeps using the mangled cliches and American phrases like Alfredo Garcia in DEMOLITION MAN. Not surprising at all, THE AMATEUR provides the baseline of countless 80s action/spy movies; if caught, the government will deny any involvement and disavow the rogue agent. The astute reader might spot similarities in subsequent works like DEATH WISH II, Stephen Leather's THE HUNTING, COBRA, TANGO & CASH, and the mirrored maze in ENTER THE DRAGON, which was inspired by THE CIRCUS and THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Naturally, in the hectic and bullet rich espionage game, also known as the wilderness of mirrors, it's no surprise that Charlie must watch his every move lest he'd be walking on broken glass.

To fully enjoy this spy thriller, it's advisable to dodge AMAZON blurbs and reviews that detail the plot, as THE AMATEUR is fascinating in not letting the reader in on what the entire book is about. It's a slow unfurling yarn that alleges revenge is very therapeutic, from a medical perspective. All in all, revenge isn't sweet, it's bitter sweet, and AN EYE FOR AN EYE is a reasonable formula for survival. Tacking on a half workable thesis on who really authored the works of Shakespeare, albeit within the confines of the spy story and the field of cryptology, THE AMATEUR is a story about coping, about loss, setting things right, and ultimately about loyalty, vengeance, and love. It's all about freedom, solving ciphers, and endings, as long as they're not happy. At the heart of THE AMATEUR is the premise that we are all accomplices; we all contribute to our own destruction. Thus, when looking for pro advice, remember that terrorism is a sickness. THE AMATEUR is the cure.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally enjoy Littell's work but I hated the premise of this one: the main character's girlfriend is killed in a terrorist/hostage situation so the whole book is about him seeking eye for an eye vengeance? Please.