The Charm School Review (Rule Three)

Title: The Charm School
Author: Nelson DeMille
Date Purchased: 9/13/2017
Price Paid: $3.17
Date Finished: 5/9/2021
Rating: 0/5

Two Rule Three books in a row? This doesn’t bode well for the entirety of this project. I don’t know what the end result will be, but I wasn’t anticipating having to knock out two in a row.

Regardless, here we are and it’s time to take a short dive into The Charm School and see what went wrong, at least in my eyes.

The Charm School is set in Cold War Moscow and details a conspiracy involving prisoners of war and a secret Soviet base. There’s a murdered American tourist, late night KGB/American diplomat car chases, and plenty of Cold War era staring matches.

I was intrigued by the premise of the book and the first few chapters drew me in, but then it just lost me. The plot development was glacially slow, and I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. In fact, the more I got to know the characters, the more I found myself disliking them. Their actions make little sense, they treat each other like shit, and there was too much of an attempt to capture the contempt between the Americans and the Soviets.

That final part can probably be explained by the fact that this book was written during the actual Cold War, which would make it a lot more relevant than it is now. Putting that aside, I still feel that he could have done a lot less work on the setting and a lot more work on furthering the plot.

I think, at some point in time, there was a “Dan” that would have enjoyed this book. That single fact made it tough to walk away. But here we are, and I’m moving on…and I think I’m taking another one of DeMille’s books (The Talbot Odyssey) off the list as well.

Final Thoughts: I’ve heard the ending of this book gets exciting, but I won’t get there.