This is a great espionage thriller set in the architecturally beautiful Vienna, a city I know well, soon to come out as a film with Jake Gyllenhaal. A traumatised Freddie Makin left S8, a covert CIA unit, after a disastrous mission left 3 friends and colleagues dead in Yemen. Plagued by flashbacks, nightmares, and difficulties sleeping, for a year Freddie has been working as a surveillance expert for a unknown client of Leo Behnke, his employer. Freddie feels he knows all there is to know about Vienna Technical University academic, Jiang Chen, a man with rigid routines. Suffering from an onset of an ocular migraine, he leaves his surveillance of Chen to go home, this is to save his life as when he gets home a man tries to shoot him. Not a man who is comfortable killing anyone, he is about to find himself in a position where he is forced to do so to survive as he kills the intruder. Chen has disappeared, and Freddie is certain he has been murdered as he goes on the run. He has no idea who wants him dead or why, and nothing he knows about Chen provides any clue as to why the academic had to be eliminated.

Freddie goes to see his employer, Leo, in Munich but Leo is shot dead without Freddie being any the wiser about the identity of the client behind Chen's surveillance. Freddie's expertise in staying below the radar allows him to elude those after him and provide him with an opportunity to discover that they are American. Are they CIA? Knowing they expect him to leave Vienna, Freddie does the counter intuitive thing by staying in Vienna at the trendy, off the wall Madhouse Hotel where he gets to close to would be artist, Eva, who works there. Having been a solitary and isolated figure since the Yemen fiasco and sleepwalking through life, Freddie finds himself joining the human race as he begins for the first time to see the beauty of Vienna and the benefits of developing friends. As he battles to survive the murderous intentions of a powerful rogue CIA operative, Freddie investigates the women in Chen's life, the Russian History Professor, Marina Mikhailova and lover, Wei Jun.

Kevin Wignall writes a compelling and tense thriller amidst the background of Vienna, a city where spies abound and is a strong character in its own right. Freddie is your ordinary man whose life is turned upside down when he becomes a target for elimination. His predicament has him digging deep to find the inner resources to find out why Chen had to die, and finding the means to make life difficult for his pursuers. Wignall ensures Freddie is a flawed character you find yourself rooting for as he fights for his life with his backstory being slowly revealed as the story progresses. This is a wonderfully entertaining novel of spies with a wide range of diverse characters. The women, Marina Mikhailova, Wei Jun, Eva, really caught my attention in particular, just such interesting characters as Freddie learns that effectively he knew so little about Chen despite his intense surveillance. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Amazon Publishing UK for an ARC.

It is always a joy to learn a new Kevin Wignall book is about to be released and I will hassle and cajole to get an ARC or purchase one as soon as it is available.
The author writes with great style and humanity.
So it is good to report having consumed the latest offering my joy has been replaced by a sense of well-being and a smile tattooed to my face.
To die in Vienna is a modern spy thriller set mostly in Europe but with a recurring throwback to a failed mission in Yemen. It focuses on the washed out former agent Freddie Makin who 5 years on from failure and resignation has become a watcher, a high-tech surveillance operative. Tasked for the past 12 months to follow every aspect of a Chinese intellectual in Vienna.
His mundane assignment takes a more sinister turn when he returns home one day to find his flat being robbed. The thief gets away but later returns to kill him.
From nowhere his life is turned upside down and suddenly he is wanted man. His employers appear to have been subcontracted by the CIA and for some reason they want him dead. During his many hours of observation he appears to have seen or over heard something that means he has to be silenced.
A classic story is played out. That of an innocent party trying to stay safe, while others are hellbent to kill them. Meanwhile in any time afforded to them, seeking to work out what they have stumbled across that has made further existence a liability to the pursuers, in this case the CIA.
He is a closed person, quite lonely and withdrawn haunted by nightmares of how his life unravelled 5 years before. He has no friends; no contacts and little tradecraft to call upon. He has few choices and limited resources at hand. He needs answers and quickly as the ‘enemy’ seems to be ready and increasingly determined to end his life. It is a journey of personal discovery and he finds his life becomes more worthwhile as he strives to ward off harm and deadly intent. Who can he trust; where can he hide?
I love the writing and characters penned by the author. Ordinary people who find themselves in strange circumstances. Little support and gadgets to give an edge, so Freddie relies on tools of his recent trade to gain an advantage. His life is in constant danger but he views his pursuers with a detachment that ensures he wants answers with little collateral damage. He’ll take them out of the picture but not euphemistically; he has no desire to kill those trying to kill him.
The book has great locations and brilliant set pieces. Freddie is a guy we can identify with who we’ll root for but sadly we grow increasingly gloomy that he’ll survive.
All is set up for a showdown meeting with the rogue CIA agent, Langley seem to have given carte blanche to operate but somehow Freddie must cut a deal with.
Too many people have been killed. Freddie must face him knowing he has little to bargain with, and his life is all the guy has ever sought since the nightmare started.
Had me gripped to the very end. Loved the journey we take with Freddie. Wignall has the inside track on modern espionage. A book of hope; perhaps not for life after death but a sense of finding oneself; healing the past and finding reason to live again.
Trouble for Freddie is he finds peace with his past and an acceptance for a life he had largely shunned in these past few years, just when he faces the most serious threat to his ongoing existence.
Read it to find the journeys end.

A very well written suspense thriller. Freddie, the main character, has had a man under surveillance for a year until they are suddenly killed. Freddie is then forced to flee as whoever killed the man he’d been watching is after him next, seemingly due to something he’d seen. He has no idea why this is happening, as the surveillance footage has all seemed innocuous to him. Many of the people he turns to for help end up dead, and he is forced to piece together the reasoning behind these events as he lays low. It’s not made entirely clear what Freddie did for S8, his previous employer before working for the surveillance company, and his past seemed somewhat murky to me, as he was frequently referred to as a civilian. But the story has likable characters, occasional amusing moments to break the tension, and when we finally find out the reason behind everything that’s happened it seems so simple and yet intriguing at the same time. I wish the ending had been hashed out a bit more, and the final chapter was a bit odd in that it seemed out of place having very minor characters featured. Overall a really good read, and I enjoyed it a lot.

I've not read much spy action thrillers but this one felt very different to the ones I had. Slower paced for one, but that worked well in the sense the tension built up steadily and the twists and shadows of the city appeared and disappeared at will.

Freddie was a great character but for a spy was rather in touch with his feelings!Not sying that spies aren't or shouldn't be but he has a backstory and worries of his own which ,when being the target as it were, really came into his own. There's a great deal to think about if you're a spy it would seem and loyalty is not all it's cracked up to be. This was an interesting angle on the spy story for me and there were lots of grey areas opposed to the black and white of the spy world and the world outside.

Vienna was the perfect backdrop to this story of secrets and spies. Old, gothic and with plenty of character and history. The characters moved around the city, taking advantage of it history and cobbled, twisty alleyways. The author really used the setting well to illustrate an old city, plenty of heritage and secrets of course.

It's going to be a film - think this will work really well on screen and I'll be in that queue at the cinema for sure!