The Swimmer

No; despite its title, the book is not about a professional swimmer. The Swimmer, a novel by Joakim Zander, is about a CIA agent and his daughter. It just so happens the CIA agent likes to swim – for relaxation.

The Swimmer: A Novel by [Zander, Joakim]

I’m going to quote an official blurb about the book, found here:

Klara Walldéen was raised by her grandparents on a remote archipelago in the Baltic Sea, learning to fish and hunt and sail a boat through a storm. Now, as an EU Parliament aide in Brussels, she is learning how to navigate the treacherous currents of international politics: the lines between friend and enemy, truth and lies.
But Klara has accidentally seen something she shouldn’t have: a laptop containing information so sensitive that someone will kill to keep hidden. Suddenly, she is thrown into a terrifying chase across Europe, with no idea who is hunting her or why.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, an old spy hides from his past. Once, he was a man of action, an operative so dedicated that he abandoned his infant daughter to keep his cover. Now, he is the only man who can save Klara . . . and she is the only woman who can allow him to lay old ghosts to rest.

Okay. I will try not to give too many spoilers, but there may be a few small ones. Proceed accordingly.

I have a few issues with the above-mentioned blurb.

  • First, Klara doesn’t recognize anything treacherous about the EU Parliament. Sure, she’s got a friends-with-benefits relationship with a French politician, but that’s more scandalous than treacherous.
  • Second, when it says she sees a laptop, she literally sees a laptop. She even holds it and totes it around. But it’s password protected and she can’t see what’s on it. It’s like a Gatorade bottle – you know it’s green and holds liquid, but you can’t be sure what’s in it until you open the lid and take a look (or a taste). She’s a pretty smart cookie, though, and knows she’s being chased because of whatever is on the laptop.
  • Finally, the CIA operative does carry around some guilt for what happened with Klara’s mother, and he alternates between two coping mechanisms: drinking and swimming. He drinks to numb emotion, and he swims to escape. For someone with Olympic-caliber talent as a swimmer, I thought it would play a larger role in his character or story. Nope; just one of his habits.

The official blurb makes it sound very high-stakes and exciting.

Here would be my summary. Klara gets an email from her ex-boyfriend. After years of no contact, he wants to meet up when he comes to Brussels for a conference. First the ex-boyfriend meets an old military buddy who drags him into a mess he doesn’t understand. Naturally, the ex-boyfriend promptly drags Klara into the same mess. There’s a laptop containing information people will kill to keep quiet, and Klara is the lucky one who retrieves it. Chaos ensues: Klara is running for her life, and people are chasing after her with evil intentions.

I really wanted to like this book. I had expectations for this to be similar to Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. But The Swimmer, for me, fell short.

The author tells the story from multiple character’s perspectives and different timelines. I enjoyed this, but it’s not for everyone. For me, it was easy to follow and I liked their different thought processes and voices. I thought some of the character background information was unnecessary, but not painful to read. The idea of government(s) and their agents tied up in questionable activities and desperate to keep it quiet isn’t new. But it did feel believable.

But there is a lot of background. It is 100 pages before the main story (Klara running for her life) actually gets started, and it feels slow to gain momentum. It’s not until page 230 that Klara and her father end up on the same wavelength – prior to this, most of her father’s perspective is from years ago. Even then, not much interaction between father and daughter even occurs, which I was looking forward to. And the last 40-50 pages were very . . . convenient. If the author wanted to make sure it ended with a bow, this is a really big and shiny and perfectly tied bow.

So, this book was fine. A perfectly lovely little book. Unfortunately, for me, this book felt very much like one of it’s characters: average size, average look, and generally forgettable. Sorry, Susan.

Overall: 6/10

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