I always get excited for a new spy thriller, but The Helsinki Affair didn’t quite hit the target. The setup was intriguing—Amanda Cole, a CIA agent in Rome, gets a tip about a planned assassination of a US Senator. The premise promises high stakes and international intrigue. However, the execution was lackluster. Amanda’s quest to unravel an international conspiracy after the assassination takes us on a whirlwind tour from Rome to Helsinki, yet the storytelling felt bogged down by too many details and awkward sentence structures. The narrative’s frequent point of view switches, especially noticeable in the audiobook, added to the confusion rather than the suspense. Halfway through, the novel […]