Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsIf you like spy stories, you'll like about 64% of this book.
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2017
GOOD THINGS
If you like John Le Carre', The Americans, some Agatha Christie, and spy stories generally, you'll like *most* of this book up to about p. 280 or so. That's a large part of the book. The section about the author's childhood and youth in East Germany is fascinating, and his emerging affection for the material benefits of capitalism once he is living in the U.S. is sort of interesting. The dead drops, the codes, the secret messages at random places in New York's five boroughs are all fascinating (especially if, like me, you live in New York, and you begin to wonder what you might be missing as you travel around the city), and the author's upward mobility through American higher education and then corporate life are interesting to follow. -- The narrative also shows with great clarity the undercover spy's need to compartmentalize his life, and (like the spies in The Americans) to sacrifice ordinary morality, kindness to other human beings, and communication with family members to the alleged needs of an ideology-driven, apparently all-powerful State.
NOT-SO-GREAT ASPECTS OF THE BOOK.
By the end, however, you realize that a very smart but not very profound man has led an exciting life; it's his adventures that are interesting but not the man himself. Increasingly, as you read through this book's 325 pages, Philosophical and Religious Musings dominate, and adventures become less important, and you realize, This man is dull. Some of the dullness may be due to the 'professional' 'writer', the 'written with' part of the team. Is she responsible for the grammatical errors and the cliches? Quite possibly. The prose of Joe Reilly (the FBI agent who 'captured' the author) in his 'Afterword' is much livelier, clearer, and more forceful than the prose of the rest of the book; possibly he wrote it himself. -- To the lovers of thrillers and spy stories like myself, the dullest and dimmest part of the book is the last third or so, when the author Finds Jesus and Finds Love and discovers that Love, Jesus, Faith, his older daughter, and his third wife (and the fourth woman to bear one of his five children) offer the True Meaning of Life. On p. 304, he (or Cindy Coloma, the 'professional' 'writer') writes, '...somehow God's protective handed shielded me during my entire high-risk life.' --Really?? it wasn't your own superb smarts, luck, and the carelessness of the KGB? it wasn't the privileges that accrue to a highly-educated, very tall and somewhat good-looking white male in the western world that carried you through? -- Nope. It was Jesus, it seems. Dittrich/Barsky becomes the dullest kind of born-again Christian when he starts telling us about his 'journey of Faith.' -- Of course, it's not hard to see how a former committed Communist might morph someday into a born-again Christian; clearly, Dittrich/Barsky was a man who felt life was empty without an ideology. -- Okay. So be it. -- But it's not really interesting to read about. -- Nor is the blog on D/B's personal web site, which is full of dull prose, conservative opinions, and hackneyed "ideas." -- The youthful KGB spy has morphed into a Seriously Christian suburban dad who values material comforts, believes that Trump was right to fire Comey (that info comes from his personal web site), and is a patriotic American.
This sentence from Joe Reilly's conclusion says more briskly and unsentimentally what the book is about: "Failed marriages, abandoned children, lost causes, financial uncertainty -- all the detritus of a spy's life -- failed to crush an inner spark of optimism that continues to drive Jack toward the next new chapter in his life."
IN CONCLUSION
D/B is or appears thoroughly sincere, and he definitely has a story to tell. But fiction is more interesting than reality, and the brutal, amoral thugs of The Americans, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, are much more exciting to follow. -- Take this book out of the library or borrow it from a friend. It would make good reading (much of it but not all of it) in a doctor's waiting room, on a stalled train, or on the beach. -- And read the interviews with Dittrich / Barsky on line, which offer many little details that aren't in the book.