Just finished the 3rd in Jason Matthews’ “Red Sparrow” series, “The Kremlin’s Candidate,” about the trials and travails of Dominika Egorova, Russian spy extraordinaire, and Nate Nash of the CIA. I have to admit it from the start: my favourite feature of these novels is the salty language of the spys and spymasters. I am a husband, father, employer, and owner of retail stores and by mandate I have to be a very polite person from morning to night. One of my guilty pleasures, and one I counsel my daughter against, is using bad words, and especially bad words in the service of humour. Matthews has me covered. I don’t think I have heard nearly as many inventive uses for male private parts as he disgorges in his spy series. So he keeps me laughing throughout. The humour doesn’t hide the sadism in the characters, especially in his most evil villains. The stories are gory, sexist, and technical. I’ve heard Matthews interviewed about the stories but strangely the interviewers did not take him up on the recipes that punctuate the ends of the chapters. Sometimes the recipes are for great dishes, sometimes just canapés, and sometimes downright disgusting, such as the boiled cabbage one might find in Moscow Airport on a late, foggy evening. Maybe there’s a precedent for them, but I haven’t seen one. It did make me think for a bit on the life of a covert agent travelling around the world and having to acclimatize him/herself to local cuisine. You either have to have a strong stomach, or a penchant for cooking your own food. Having lived in London in the 1970’s I can tell you that survival meant avoiding English cooking for Chinese, Italian, and mostly Indian cooking. Times have changed a little over there. I live in Toronto where you have the opportunity to experiment with a hundred different cuisines and go back to your own when you’ve blundered. But for a spy working in officially “denied service” areas, you may not have a choice. It’s kebabs over a fire or nothing. ( )

Really good book, but I honestly wasn't fond of the ending. I've enjoyed the trilogy immensely though. ( )

At the start of the Red Sparrow series, I thought this was going to be a love story. The second in the series showed love realistically in their situation. By the end of the third book, I realized I missed the focus of the series. It is not a love story. The focus is the Red Sparrow. Now it is obvious. I will have to reread the series with this in mind. Later. ( )

Excellent ending to an exceptional trilogy.

Have to say, when I started the first novel, I truly questioned if Matthews could hold my interest for all three books. Instead, when I finished each, I couldn't wait to get on to the next one.

I'm not going to spoil anything here, but if you want to read a completely satisfying series from beginning to end, these are the three books you want. ( )

Great beginning, recalling Sparrow Dominika Egorova bedding a female U.S. naval officer, who is blackmailed into becoming a Russian spy. Each of them enjoy meteoric career ascensions, with the naval officer shortlisted to become CIA director, and Dominika, head of the SVR. The tension as to which shall learn of the other's identity first is palpable. I think Matthews does a good job capturing the spy business and there are some interesting new characters, especially the re-activated Polish spy team. However, the naval officer's character was inconsistent in many ways, perhaps due to her unhappy. Moreover, there were too many globetrotting adventures that distracted from the story, and the chapter-ending recipes were already tiresome in the last book. Finally, the ending was weak. ( )