"Once A Spy" by Keith Thomson

What happens when a retired master spy gets Alzheimer’s? This is one of the most creative ideas for a spy novel I have seen. Charlie Clark has a bad relationship with his father and barely speaks to him. Charlie’s mother died when he was young. Charlie believes his father spent his entire career worked for a third-rate appliance company and resents all the things he missed in his childhood because of his father’s job and reluctance to do anything interesting. Now Charlie is a gambler in trouble with the Russian mob for his losses at the track and his father Drummond has memory loss problems.

Charlie gets a call to pick up his father who has wandered away from home and soon learns that nothing about his life is as he believed. Drummond’s job with the appliance company was a front: he spent his career as spy. The book is full of fast-moving action as Charlie and his father are running from people trying to kill them. Drummond alternates between confused forgetfulness and the skilled master spy he had been. And in between ducking bullets and trying to escape assassins, Charlie and Drummond rebuild their relationship.

I loved this book. The premise is creative and it was fun to read.

I got the book from the library.  Support your local library!