As a reader of many novels, and also a writer of four of them, I found THE EIGHTH SISTER to be a real roller coaster! The beginning hooked me immediately as the protagonist Charlie Jenkins heads off to Russia, reactivated as a CIA operative in order to help protect the Seven Sisters who are Russian female spies for America. Charlie’s cover is that he actually has a security company with a division in Moscow and this enables him to meet his Soviet counterpart, one Viktor Federov who thinks that Charlie is actually a turncoat, willing to sell key information about the Seven Sisters for much needed moolah, as is company is failing and he has a pregnant wife and child to support. The back of the book lets us know that his cover gets blown and now Federov is out to capture, torture and most likely kill him. So far, so good. However, as Charlie does his best to evade the Russian, Federov figures out every one of his dodges, so much so that as a writer, I began to see through the novel. Said in another way, each chapter in this part of the book reads like The Perils of Pauline. Dugoni’s skill as a writer, from my perspective, suffered greatly here because each “chase” chapter was a different rendition of the same thing, come up with a great scheme to escape capture yet the clairvoyant Federov always knew the score. It just lost believability as I could see the author simply using the exact same device to begin and end every chapter.I had reached the point when I was about to toss the book out the window, but then read a great review of another Dugoni book, so decided to pick it up once more and plow through to the end. I have to say, boy I’m glad I did. The last quadrant of the tale is a rip-roaring courtroom thriller, incredibly exciting and very difficult to put down. Not to give too much away, the government will not allow our hero, now accused as a traitor and a spy, to use essential documents because they successfully use the “national security” argument.Here, for me is where the story gets very interesting, because I myself, working as a handwriting expert, was faced with the very same dilemma. The best way for Charlie to beat the wrap is to refer to the documents that he is not allowed to even mention at trial! In my case, new information came in very late to the trial – a forgery case -- and the opposing side was successful in blocking me, as a handwriting expert, from using this crucial evidence forcing me to rely on an earlier rendition of my report which was missing this vital information. What does Charlie do when he is sworn in “to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God”? What could I do? If I were to say, “I can’t swear to tell the whole truth because you (the judge) has ordered me to limit my testimony,” I could be held in contempt of court. The same problem arises in this novel.Forced to limit my testimony, and now faced with an impossible defense, I decided several years later to replay that precise scene in my novel FATE LINE, a graphological murder mystery. In my case, I changed myself to an aging Holocaust survivor to takes the judge to task for asking this venerated handwriting expert to swear to God to tell the whole truth, when in fact he is not being allowed to. Having testified dozens of time in court, I can tell you from my own experience that the trial scenes in THE EIGHTH SISTER were superbly done and that very dilemma was expertly handled. Except for the weakness noted above during the cookie-cutter Russian chase sequences, I thought this was an entertaining and even educational book and look forward to reading another by Robert Dugoni.