This is a test: can I write well enough to convince you to read THE EIGHTH SISTER, to make you believe, if you’ve read Robert Dugoni before, that this is his best and, if you haven’t, that this first book in his Charles Jenkins (who you may remember from the David Sloane series) series is a great place to start? I finished reading it last night in the middle of the night, when I should have been sleeping. And I’m a picky reader. And I write honest reviews.

Part 1 of THE EIGHTH SISTER places Jenkins in Russia after he believes he has been reactivated as a CIA agent. His objective is to find the identity of the eighth “sister.” The other seven “sisters” are CIA spies. Already, two have been found out and probably killed. Can Jenkins help prevent a similar fate for the other five “sisters”?

Before long, though, Jenkins learns that all is not as he had been told.

Descriptions of Russia and Turkey sound so authentic that I wondered throughout this part where and how Dugoni got his information. (Read the “Acknowledgements.”) These details, along with Jenkins’s struggles there, make this the best kind of book, i.e., the unputdownable kind, the kind you have to keep reading, even during lunch and dinner.

I never describe a book’s plot so much that the reader’s enjoyment might be spoiled. Therefore, I don’t describe Part 2 because it might say too much about what happened in Part 1. (Warning: Don’t read other reviews unless it isn’t important to you that you experience this book as the author intended.) But David Sloane is back in Part 2 and so is his stepson, now a law student. Let’s hope Sloane continues in the rest of the Jenkins series.

Other reviews compare THE EIGHTH SISTER to books by LeCarré. In my experience, THE EIGHTH SISTER is better. Really.

I throughly enjoyed listening to this spy thriller! I wouldn’t normally pick a story about espionage and US/Russia but it kept my attention and was a nice change would recommend!