Andrew Callahan had just graduated from Harvard and has an offer from one of the biggest consulting firms out there when one of his professors offers him a chance of a lifetime - go to China to teach for a year and improve your Mandarin - and the offer will still be there for you when you come back. Having fallen in love with the language, Andrew jumps at the opportunity and in May 1999, he shows up in Beijing, ready to start what is supposed to be a step towards a brighter future.

Before long he learns that the rules in China are very different from what he is used to - and not conforming to them can cause a lot of troubles - from expulsion from the country (which will probably lead to losing that offer for future work) to jail and worse. But Andrew is young and when he falls in love, all precautions and warnings become less important. But that's not this kind of story at all.

Remember that once in a lifetime chance that seemed to come out of nowhere for him? Yeah, about that... As it turns out, his old professor works for the CIA and that whole trip was a part of a plan to assist a defecting general from the People's Liberation Army. And Andrew, already in the middle of everything, is running out of choices - especially because he is not ready to give up the woman he fell in love with.

And that' where the novel actually starts properly. The cat and mouse game between Andrew and his handlers and the government is anything you would expect from a spy thriller. But... somewhere in there the author did one turn too many. Spy fiction has its own rules and surprises and betrayals coming out of nowhere and without proper foundation are a major part of the genre (unlike in mysteries where you never pull one of those off unless you really really have a very good reason for it). So the fact that things were never what one expected them to be was expected. You never knew who talks to whom and who has a hidden agenda - and that worked to a point. Until it almost felt like the author stopped carrying about logic or the story and just tried to cram as many of these turns and surprises into the novel as he could.

That's not uncommon for first time novelists in the genre and I had read a lot of even clunkier attempts at it - most authors need a lot of self-editing (or an editor willing to tell them to cut it) until they find the balance between suspense and loss of credibility. And despite that issue, the novel still works but it would have been a much tighter and better novel if the last 3rd of it had been edited a few more times.

One of the good things in the novel was the description of China in the late 1990s/early 2000s - a country in transition. The author had lived in China in the last 2 decades and started there teaching at an elite university in Beijing - so he draws on his own memories and experiences for the book. And it is a fascinating background - while I am not sure how much is true and how much is invented, most of the background sounds true enough.

The novel is partially based on a real story - it never specifies which one but looking around internet unearths the story of Xu Junping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Junping which matches close enough in time and details.

Not bad for a first novel and if he ever publishes another one, I plan to check it but it could have been so much better. ( )

China and undercover work in the country are pictured just right.