From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Ashenden

W. Somerset Maugham

Start date: January 1, 2020

Finish date: January 31, 2020

Discussion: Group reads

Why we're reading this: Winner of our January 2020 poll - something slightly different, as these are classic spy tales.
[close] Winner of our January 2020 poll - something slightly different, as these are classic spy tales.

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Group reads

* November 2025 group read - Winner!
By Judy · 20 posts · 28 views

last updated 5 hours, 10 min ago

* Sept 25: Lonesome Road (#3 Miss Silver Mysteries) by Patricia Wentworth
By Susan · 15 posts · 15 views

last updated Sep 13, 2025 09:27AM

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What Members Thought

Jan 23, 2020 Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: espionage-action-suspense-thriller, keeping-it-short

3.5★

"I gather from what you have not said that he is an unmitigated scoundrel."

R. smiled with his pale blue eyes.

"I don't know that I'd go quite so far as that. He hasn't had the value of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game aren't quite the same as yours and mine. I don't know that I would leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he had lost money to you at poker and he had pinched your cigarette-case, he would immediately pawn it to pay

...more

46 likes · Like · see review

Oct 24, 2017 Leslie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller-suspense, kindle, war

Because this is a WW1 spy story, I have shelved it under thriller-suspense but it is not actually either thrilling nor suspenseful. Ashenden, like Maugham himself, is a writer drafted into the Secret Service but his job is more one of observation than of danger or action. As Ashenden says:

"Being no more than a tiny rivet in a vast and complicated machine, he never had the advantage of seeing a completed action. He was concerned with the beginning or the end of it, perhaps, or with some incident ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2020 Jill rated it it was ok

Shelves: jill-s-sixth-year-challenge

To me this was a 2.5 star book. I did like the descriptions of the landscapes but didn't find the contents of the stories very interesting. I am not a fan of short stories, and although these had a theme running through them, I still felt they were disjointed. Other people have mentioned humour in these stories but I didn't find any remotely humourous. I never took much to Ashenden at the start and working my way through the book, had no reason to change my mind.
Maybe something else by this auth ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2019 Sandy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, mystery-detective-grp, fiction-general, nonfiction-general, rread-2019

This is a book of linked short stories /memoirs based on Maugham's life as a spy in the first world war. I found many of them quite touching, a few darkly humorous, and most realistic. ...more

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