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Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China (2011)

by David Wise(Favorite Author)

3.37 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0547553102 (ISBN13: 9780547553108)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: I have a hankering for a good spy thriller, and have been looking for the new wave of China-oriented fiction to come and replace the old Russian-oriented stuff of the Cold War era. I was also interested in the news reports surrounding the (alleged) hacking by Chinese agents of various governments around the world. When I found Tiger Trap, I was really hoping for some sort of insight into this world.What I got out of Tiger Trap was an extremely dry retelling, and retelling, and re-re-telling of fairly mundane, and for the most part, uninteresting page 3 gossip about Chinese agents in America, and the FBI's (on the whole) inept attempts at dealing with them. I am not sure whether David Wise set out with the intention of telling a coherent narrative, but if he did, he certain... morely failed miserably.I found it extremely difficult to track where the characters (albeit real life), and events were taking place in history, as Wise insisted on jumping back and forth through time, rehashing events covered in great detail, and linking unrelated persons, whose only connection was that they were also Chinese agents.I read recently a book called The Bureau and the Mole by David A Vise, which is a retelling of Robert Hanssen's life as a spy in the FBI. I will admit that I had a bit of author-confusion when I saw a book by David Wise. The aforementioned book by David A Vise is told with much greater clarity and colour than this book. I would recommend that book to anyone interested in real life spy stories.There are an enormous number of references to interviews and conversations which the Author had with various parties involved in the saga. Surely he could have managed to string together these recollections into more of an interesting narrative. He hints at what are current events, but the truth is that he has almost no truths to be had, outside of what you can find in Wired Magazine and the like. As a re-telling of history, it is interesting, but as a reference for the future, it is meaningless.I think the greatest message this book achieves is that America doesn't understand Chinese methodologies, and as a result, has had a history of counter intelligence failures. The co-greatest message is that the Author has failed in writing a dull, uninspired book about what should be an interesting and gripping subject.
review 2: David Wise has written a very readable account that claims to be a history of Chinese espionage within the borders of the United States. More than history of Chinese actions however, its' also a history lined with leaks both known and unknown within the various intelligence organizations within the United States. Wise begins by detailing the conventional Cold War nature of the espionage community as being focused on the Russia/Soviet Union threat, while China has perhaps eclipsed the Russian threat in terms of the damage it inflicts. China has a different more subtle way of spying that often relies more on gentle persuasion and inducement rather than their Russian counterparts by playing upon a natural nature by first generation Chinese immigrants to America to feel sympathetic towards creating a more prosperous China, and others who may feel sympathetic towards it.The rest of the book details three spying affairs that snared China unknown amounts of intelligence and caused the fall of employees in the CIA, FBI, and Department of Defense who had sterling careers before the incidents. The book outlines three cases, most notably Tiger Trap, but seems to indicate that the cases are on some level interconnected, another aspect of Chinese espionage rings that differs from the legends of the KGB. Loved the book, but it wasn't perfect. In a book subtitled : America's Secret Spy War against China, I was expecting to hear a little bit more about American attempts to counter China's behavior, the book made it sound other than a brief mention towards the end concerning cyber hackers that the US wasn't mounting any effort to counter China in their efforts. Overall, Wise could've written a big scary, panic in the streets inducing book about how China knows everything and we're doomed, but he didn't, opting instead to write an engaging thorough read that read like any Cold War spy thriller. less

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