Review: Mood Like LeCarré's The Little Drummer Girl on `Crack'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
In Seven Days From Sunday, M.H. Sargent, builds credible characters in a complex, fast-paced plot. What made the people of this great book stand out was their vulnerability. One possibly critical fault in the structure of spy thrillers remains superhero expectations on the part of readers. This author builds on what this reader remarks as a growing narrative style in a nascent niche in the thriller/spy market, namely reality-based characters.The story bounces around a linear, one-week-to-solve-it-all scaffold. Characters, such as the maintenance man evolving into a professional photojournalist, grow more and more human with every new scene that they populate. The terrorists engender the reader's hatred not only by their ruthlessness, but also by the clever way that the author contrasts some of the good guys' hopes and desires to the callousness of the bad guys.The plot revolves around an action-packed series of events in Bagdad, Iraq reminiscent of a blockbuster film starring Matt Damon. Spoilers keep me from going into detail, but the mood reminds this reader of the mood of The Little Drummer Girl by John LeCarré, though paced a little more on `crack'.