Mulberry Bush

By: Charles McCarry

Narrated by: Robert Fass

In a rose garden in Buenos Aires, an unnamed American spy meets the beautiful daughter of a famous Argentinean revolutionary. He becomes infatuated, and so does she. But he is no ordinary spy - he is an off-the-books lone wolf who spent his first five years working for "Headquarters", hunting terrorists in the Middle East. Unbeknownst to his lenient handlers, he is loyal to a hidden agenda: to avenge his father, who was laughed out of Headquarters many years before and died a beggar.

In the sultry, young Argentinean, Luz, the spy thinks he has found an ally. Like his father, her parents also met a terrible fate. But as his path becomes further entwined with hers, the spy finds himself caught in a perilous web of passions, affiliations, and lies that spans three continents and stretches back to the Cold War.

Steeped in the knowledge of modern-day tradecraft, The Mulberry Bush is a potent and seductive novel that explores what happens when the most powerful political motivator is revenge.

©2015 Charles McCarry (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Entertaining but....

Would you consider the audio edition of Mulberry Bush to be better than the print version?

There were several mispronunciations that I found distracting. Oregon is Ory-gun NOT Ory-gone.

A bit too much romance for me...

Charles McCarry is a very good writer. I've read other books by him and the writing in this book was as good as the rest. But I'm not really a romance reader and there was too much of that in this book for me. The story was good and the outcome satisfying, but the love story between our spy and Luz just didn't hold my attention as much as the rest of the book and it took up a lot of book.

It's something I notice occasionally with older male writers; they just can't help but write ad nauseum about beautiful young women and their charms.

I went looking for a good modern spy novel and I felt like the spy portion played second fiddle in this book.