Red Widow

★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Another weekday morning at Langley. Men and women streamed across the parking lots—past the towering parabolic antennas, the Blackbird spy plane made into a monument—to converge on a set of doors placed into a wall so discreetly that they could be secret doors, known only to the initiated.

It was a cold morning. In raincoats and windbreakers, they moved with mindless determination, like ants following the scent of sugar, minds already on the coming day, chores left undone from the day before, a confrontation anticipated with a boss or coworker. Or they were brooding over what they'd just left behind, an argument at the breakfast table, the last thing a child said before running for the school bus. Not one of them was thinking about what it meant to cross the threshold of the most secretive building in America.

RED WIDOW

An exhilarating spy thriller about two women CIA agents who become intertwined around a threat to the Russia Division–one that's coming from inside the agency.

Lyndsey Duncan worries her career with the CIA might be over. After lines are crossed with another intelligence agent during her most recent assignment, she is sent home to Washington on administrative leave. So when a former colleague, now Chief of the Russia Division, recruits her for an internal investigation, she jumps at the chance to prove herself once more. Lyndsey was once a top handler in the Moscow Field Station, known as the “human lie detector” and praised for recruiting some of the most senior Russian officials. But now, three Russian assets have been discovered–including one of her own–and the CIA is convinced there's a mole in the department. With years of work in question, and lives on the line, Lyndsey is thrown back into life at the agency, only this time tracing the steps of those closest to her.

Meanwhile, fellow agent Theresa Warner can't avoid the spotlight. She is the infamous “Red Widow,” the wife of a former director killed in the field under mysterious circumstances. With her husband's legacy shadowing her every move, Theresa is a fixture of the Russia Division, and as she and Lyndsey strike up an unusual friendship, her knowledge proves invaluable. But as Lyndsey uncovers a surprising connection to Theresa that could answer all of her questions, she exposes a terrifying web of secrets within the department, if only she is willing to unravel it...

* Although one death is pretty horrific and gets a little space because of it.

RED WIDOW

juuuuuuuuuuust

bad

A fairly middle-of-the-road spy thriller. Aside from centering female characters, it appears to be aggressively avoiding doing anything interesting.

In response to the rise of the “gritty” superhero movie (ie., the DC films of Nolan, Snyder), some critics pondered if maybe applying a serious approach to comic book subjects was really the best approach.

Red Widow reflects a similarly muddled mash-up of approaches, attempting to combine the process realism of a Le Carré with the heroism of a Ludlum. The result appears to pull the weakest elements of both, characters with the depth of a pop spy novel engaged in the exiting day-to-day of office politics.

The writing is mostly fine, but it's a largely forgettable story.