The Innocent

I read it entirely by accident and could not put it down . Well written, good character developement and portrayed spying from a down to earth perspective and honesty. There are no heroes, we see people with all their faults and idiosyncracies, stumbling through life. A work of fiction but set around an event that really occured.
I knew Berlin in the cold war era and the book and characters made me have a certain nostalgia for a time which is now gone forever( thank God ) and the players of the game, US, Brits and Germans and of course the Russian bear . I reccomend it.
Geoff Holdway MD Ancaster ON Canada

At first I thought this was going to be "The Spy Who Fell Into the Cold War." The setting was right; the characters were available, but then, like life, it veered into an unexpected alley. So I thought it was going to be about romance and trust and danger. But the danger wasn't from the embattled governments or other outside influences in the divided city or the divided society; the danger was from inside the relationship, from inside the individuals. Then, like life, the story veered again, coping with danger, and danger was like a voracious beast intent on devouring the trust and the romance. Only the ending of the novel doesn't ring true for me, the looking back, the untying, the rekindling; these are the postscripts to a Hollywood movie, the way we'd like things to be, under control and logical, but not very lifelike.

this story took forever to go someplace and when it got there it was beyond horrific. i tried not listening to the extremely gory parts, trying to get through it. but eventually gave up. i just didn't care enough to go on with it.

I just loved this book and the characters. The reader was excellent. High adventure and intrigue, history...everything about it was perfect until the end which turned out was just lobbed off. You never find out what happens to everyone, it just ends. I personally really hate that and so I gave it 4 stars. It would have been a 5+ if not for the "no ending" ending.

I have never encountered such a dense, naive main character until I read this book. The story is slow to develop, and there is nothing about any of the characters that make me give a hoot what happens to them. As a matter of fact, Leonard, the main character, is thick-headed and such an idiot that I want to see him caught! Even for those readers who like US vs. Soviet or Allies vs. Axis spy stories, this is just too unbelievable a yarn to hold one's attention.