Skin in the Game Paperback – 30 Jan. 2015

I tend to agree with another reviewer who found the plot somewhat unfathomable. It is also interesting to note that at the time of writing two of the four 5 star reviewers had never reviewed a book before and three of the four weren't even verified purchases.I did finish the book, it took a little perseverance though. The main characters were pretty well drawn and credible, it is the storyline that frustrated me. The plot never really unravels as the book progresses, the author seems to take it for granted that after the first quarter of the book we have all grasped it - such as it is - perhaps what we see actually is all there is to it. I'm not particularly dim and very rarely have this issue with a book and suspect that a minor re-write could actually produce the sort of page turner this book so nearly is.

It is a rarity for me to give up on any book after I start reading it. I only got 12% of the way through this one when I realised I was skipping bits, had no interest in any of the characters and had, litteraly, lost the plot. Part of the book was written in the present tense, part was not. It was unclear, at least to me, why any of the characters existed! There appeared to be lots of superfluous description. One of the characters, a psychiatrist turned spy, I think, looked directly at the surveillance camera - so what? I removed it from my kindle

This begins implausibly - plausibly enough, but then becomes, as others have said, practically unfathomable. I did stick with it to the end, which was rather more saccharine than I had been expecting for much of the time (though things were moving in that direction), given the increasingly rapid body count, but my goodness it was a chore, with multiple subplots, a plethora of characters, some of whom disappeared for long tracts of the narrative only to pop up again to shoot or be shot. There's a good book in there somewhere, about a quarter of the length, with a more easily followed narrative, and concentration on fewer characters.

Who is he? Why is he locked up? From the beginning the reader is pulled into the mystery.The plot is written from two angles simultaneously- the past and the present. I would recommend that you read this on holiday or at a weekend. I tried to read it in bits and had to start again as it is too in depth. I am so glad I did because it is so clever. It really makes you question everything 👍

A fast paced thriller that keeps one turning the pages. Lots of political intrigue, and the background sounds authentic to me, easy to imagine being caught up in such happenings in another life. Others have compared it to Jason Bourne thrillers, and I think this is the case. A bit of everything adds to the novel and rounds it out, romance, intrigue, politics, violence and mystery. Plenty of excitement!

I had a problem keeping going with this book, there were simply too many characters and at times it seemed unclear if it was Joe or Sam in the storey. It's not often I read a book that I am close to giving up on, and this was one of them.Ok, so it's his first book so the next will no doubt flow better and have fewer characters, but well done for a first book.

Would only recommend this book for ardent fans of espionage stories. It's really not very easy to follow. There are far too many characters in the book and I had a problem getting interested in most of them. I can't deny that the story is intriguing, but, in my opinion it's intriguing to the point of being almost unfathomable. Maybe that's just me though, which is why, as I said at the beginning, only suitable for ardent fans of this genre. I have to admit, though, that I have only got through 35% and I just hope that by the end I've managed to work it all out.

Despite having no idea what was going on for the first third of the book I was interested enough to carry on reading. There are some massive chunks of dialogue which are a bit off putting, the chronology is a bit annoying, and how one gets from France to Dubai and back to London without a passport baffles me, but it is an intriguing read