Agent 6 - Tom Rob Smith

I hate to say this was my least favorite of the Leo Demidov books but it was although I may be more sad that the series has ended here. I really liked Leo and Raisa and their struggles to do what was right governed by a regime that cared little for the morality of the system within which its citizens operate. This book starts with their meeting and slingshots way into the future as Leo struggles to find out the real facts behind a family tragedy.

It's hard to see in Agent 6 that Leo has become powerless to move on and become a shell of himself. While certainly lacking autonomy and power in the second book, here Leo lacks the social capital to even find out simple facts behind a murder. And so he spirals down and into the back streets and opium haze of pre-war Afghanistan.

The breadth of time and space the novel takes up may have shot too wide. Leo is jolted out of complacency in Afghanistan by a threat to a police trainee and a civilian child. He is uncomfortable with the lessons he has inadvertently passed on to his trainee and by a thin margin, is able to broker a deal with Mujahideen to get them all out of the country. Once in America, Leo is unable to give up the thread of his long ago abandoned investigation. But this is really just the denouement of a character we first met callously telling a colleague to "get over" the murder of his child and then ruthlessly hunting down a man whose guilt was less than apparent.

Whereas Leo first loved nothing and was strictly obedient to doctrine, he comes to lose almost everything to be the man the people he loved wanted him to be. Was his life richer for it? He certainly suffered more but he also became an extremely principled person and at least I'd like to think, that has a value above measure.

3.5/5 Stars.