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The Tehran Conviction (Jack Teller, #3)

Tom Gabbay

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Jun 17, 2009 Claire S rated it really liked it

Shelves: global, obama-term-1, war-mltry-conflt-occ, pol-paradigm-shift-pssbl, novel, form_complexia, pol-historical, politics-learning, religion-morality, f_interpretations

Will mull my review..

Initially: I liked the way the protaganist was with women for the most part, a lot.

The ideas discussed in this novel are fascinating and extremely timely. The merging of that discussion into the format of a spy novel caused me a bit of a stumble. Parts of it felt forced to me, or formulaic, or almost tv-movie-ish. There was something tv-movie-ish in general, I think the simple characterizations mainly. It so happens that a lot of what I've read lately is written from multip Will mull my review..

Initially: I liked the way the protaganist was with women for the most part, a lot.

The ideas discussed in this novel are fascinating and extremely timely. The merging of that discussion into the format of a spy novel caused me a bit of a stumble. Parts of it felt forced to me, or formulaic, or almost tv-movie-ish. There was something tv-movie-ish in general, I think the simple characterizations mainly. It so happens that a lot of what I've read lately is written from multiple characters' point-of-view, and/or has rich characterization and a lot of the internal workings of them all during the story. Coming from those experiences, I missed that in this one.

There were discontinuities that I couldn't bridge. Like the initial relationship between Jack and Toby; vs. the relationship between them during the 1953 events; vs. the way it apparently went between them after that (the book ends with Toby suggesting to Jack that they put aside their differences and work together, and apparently that's what happened?).

Also info about what Jack had done prior to the book starting, vs. what he was doing when it opened (tending bar); I don't know what was served by having that be so secret. Given that he had this great record, why was he not still involved in some way? Him being in the bar gives the impression that he had a problem with his past military involvement to a degree, but then that doesn't seem to be true. etc..

When toward the end Yari says that he was the realist and Jack the idealist, that threw me for a loop.

But most important, it's hard to grasp what the conclusion was intended to be regarding the US and the CIA: it is presented that such coups prevent war and provide stability and therefore are good; if that's not the intended message, I'm not seeing where it was countered in the book. There's some content around the role of the Muslim leaders, but it's pretty vague. And given that it was written today, with all that's gone on, more content about that would have been of interest.

So, as I said, I'll mull on an actual review.. ...more

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Mar 16, 2009 Jennifer Defoy marked it as to-read

Shelves: gr-first-reads-past

May 03, 2009 Allison marked it as to-read

Mar 09, 2015 Sue rated it really liked it

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