Ellen Crosby, who writes the Wine Country mysteries, has written a spy story, "Double Exposure" about a woman photographer whose CIA husband is supposedly kidnapped by Russians.
It reads like a tourist guide to Washington DC, including places that I, a Washington native, had never heard of. At first it made me homesick, but it got tedious. Two characters couldn't just have a conversation -they had to meet at a park, memorial, or museum to have it, with detailed descriptions. Never the same one twice: in a city of parks and memorials, she hit a lot of them (although she missed my favorite --- Fort Stevens where Lincoln got his hat shot off in the Civil War, the only sitting president to come under enemy fire).
It didn't work well as a spy story, either. The narrator -- main character-- was too passive. She sat around, wondering what to do while the men in her life took all the action. Ugh.
