Sometimes a story just doesn’t live up to our preconceived notions of what it should be. That doesn’t make it a bad story necessarily–it’s just not the story we wanted in that moment. Unfortunately, this is the case for me with The Amateur by Robert Littell.
This review contains spoilers for The Amateur by Robert Littell. You’ve been warned!
The premise convinced me this was a fast-paced Cold War spy thriller. While it has shades of my preconceived notions, this is not the story I thought it would be. The setup is highly compelling, but shortly after Charlie Heller crosses the border to find his revenge, things get a bit sluggish for my tastes.
Forgetting Sarah Diamond
I gave The Amateur by Robert Littell 3 stars on Goodreads when my true rating is closer to 2.5. ‘Why?’ you may ask. The story uses the murder of Charlie Heller’s fiancee as the inciting incident and then forgets about her until the end.
If The Amateur by Robert Littell is about a man so driven by grief and anger at the loss of his fiancee that he literally blackmails the CIA into helping him get revenge, then why does he seem to forget about Sarah altogether once he meets Inquiline/Elizabeth?
I will give Charlie Heller the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps he sought a sexual relationship with Elizabeth as part of his grieving process, to fill the void left by Sarah. In that time the story sucks his motivation to avenge Sarah’s death right out of the air. We follow Rodzenko and watch an apartment building for 100 pages without much progress. This may be more true to life, but reads as repetitive. When we reach the final 100 pages Charlie finally gets face-to-face with the people he’s been hunting. But the “chase” doesn’t feel like a chase until that moment. Any skullduggery or cloak-and-dagger spy work is left by the wayside in favor of Charlie spending time working on proving Shakespeare didn’t actually write his plays.
Heller doesn’t even cross the border to start his mission until roughly 170 pages into a 326-page book. He meets Inquiline/Elizabeth on page 186, and by page 210, they’ve made love. Elizabeth notes that what she wants out of it is to “pass the time, painlessly”.
It is a personal pet peeve of mine when one character tells another outright that they’re good at sex. The exact quote from Elizabeth to Charlie is: “The lovemaking was extremely well done. You were very good.” (pg. 211). She goes on to tell him, “It is not possible to love a second time the way one loved the first time. Nothing can ever be the same. Neither the giving. Nor the taking. You must understand this”. If Littell wants to make a point about how jumping into a second love can never truly replace the first, I personally think he could have done it differently.
Inventive Ways to Kill a Character
The actual kills made by Heller are inventive, and are some of the best parts of the book. The first two hammer home the “killing without pulling the trigger” point quite nicely. For the final and most important kill, Charlie Heller finally finds it in himself to pull the trigger, and the story is all the better for it. After only shooting to wound previously, being completely willing to kill Horst Schiller (the man most responsible for Sarah’s death) marks Charlie’s growth as a character.
I will admit, killing a character via X-Ray overdose is the most inventive thing I’ve seen in a while. I rank the scene of shooting out the pool window in the underground bar slightly lower. Being sucked through broken glass by water pressure isn’t as terrifying as watching someone’s body repeatedly being zapped with radioactive energy.
The hall of mirrors for the final standoff with Schiller reads as out of place in the otherwise bleak backdrop of Cold War Prague, but makes for an interesting setpiece. Schiller using Elizabeth as a human shield caused a rather large eye roll on my part, but the reveal that the CIA had been using Schiller made up for it.
“The Company” As the Enemy
Littell makes it quite clear that The Company is not the “good guy” in this story by any means. Colonel Henderson hunts Charlie down at the border, The Fat Man attempts to shoot Charlie in the street, they tip off the Chezch government in the hopes that they’ll be the ones to end Heller’s Run.
The Amateur heavily implies that the Americans are the antagonists in this story, but Horst Schiller never feels like an American Asset. Does it make sense? Absolutely! It’s what I appreciate the most about the ending, as I never saw it coming. Because I never saw it coming, I almost wish it had a few more scenes of the team hunting Heller from the US mentioning Schiller. Surprises are great, but they’re even better when you have the breadcrumbs beforehand.
TLDR
Good concept, slowly paced execution with a solid ending. If you choose to read this book, walk in knowing it’s not your average spy thriller. Temper your expectations for a more enjoyable reading experience.
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