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The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even: Stories of Espionage and Revenge
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July 2023: Adventure > The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even by Alexander McCall Smith--I rate each story in the review, averaged 2.4444 stars

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Karin | 9210 comments This book came to my attention by a friend who was mentioning one of the revenge stories. I should also mention that I'm not keen on short story collections and that McCall Smith books are a mixed bag for me. I like the No 1 Ladies books, La's Orchestra Saves the World and the Wolf Wolf ones (Ulf Varg--name literally means what I wrote.) I haven't cared much for most of his other books. That said, I really enjoyed a few of the stories in this collection.

My rating is based on the average rating for each story since it's a mixed bag. The average of the 11 stories (NOT the average of the two parts since they have different numbers of stories) is 2.4444

First part, The Private Life of Spies
Nuns and Spies - 4.5
Syphax and Omer - 3.5
Ferry Timetable - 3
Donald and Yevgeni - 2
Filioque - 1
The average of part 1 is 2.8

Second part. The Exquisite Art of Getting Even (I'm including the intros that are right before these stories with them).
Vengeance is Mine - 1 star
The Principle of Soap - 4
Money, Tiger, Rose, Etc. This was hard. The introduction is 5 stars, but I disliked the story at 1 star which is much longer, so I'm going to give it 2 stars
One, Two Three - 1 star

average of part 2 is 2 stars


message 2: by Nicole (new)

Nicole | 681 comments I very much appreciate your mathematical approach to your rating - bummer that the book wasn’t any good. Looks like things deteriorated quickly!


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