Since this was a first novel I was willing to disregard the somewhat wooden dialog and such... But even for a beginner writer, this has such intense clunkers with in-universe logic.I'll put my "bottom line" assessment before my spoiler warning:I bought this at a library book sale for a dollar. As a donation to the library it was worth it, otherwise I overpaid. 2* for coherent sentences and not being the babblings of someone on psychoactive drugs. (I finally finished it, reducing to 1*)Spoiler alert, but doesn't reveal the plot or outcomes.By about halfway through the book I had several "gah yah THAT was awful!" moments to choose from to invoke my saying:"If a character's standard behavior would kill them before the book started, don't make them the main character."But then I hit a whopper:The bad guys are going to have a meeting in a building, our protagonist is to plant bugs to figure out their plans.He knocks out the guard outside the building, takes a convenient key and opens the building's front door and walks in and shines his flashlight around...1. So Mr Protagonist can afford 20 night vision cameras that fit in a backpack. But he doesn't figure the bad guys can put even one camera to watch the door?2. Or an alarm?3. Or have guards inside the building?4. Or a booby trap?ALL these actually make WAY more sense than one guard outside the building. If nothing else most of them are cheaper. He doesn't even have some poorly explained gizmo to wave around so he can say "clear, no alarms".But let's say (for no reason I can think of) the bad guys don't do any of these... WHY does it not even slightly cross the mind of this "professional" (I feel sick using that term for this character) that they COULD?Because he's reading the book he's in? He's a poorly thought out character? The author not only didn't have anyone from the industry read this; he didn't have anyone with a critical mindset even glance through it?So the main character does this type* of thing for a living? Around people who kill people?He's dead before the book starts. Several times over.*I counted 5 solid "he's dead" mistakes earlier in the book involving a variety of different practices...:pEdit: I finally finished it. It actually got worse.Basic bad English: A "...hallway dead-ended at a T intersection"...Basic lack of gun knowledge (in a book with lots of guns): "... the sound of a slide release being pulled back on a gun."... You can pull back on the slide of a gun, not its release. If your gun is loaded you just ejected a perfectly good round and look like the idiot you are , if not loaded (in combat) you're an idiot.And a silly PSA:When dealing with bio weapons do not use high explosives to destroy them! Semtex does not "incinerate" things unless you build a fire out of it (I know you can burn C-4, never tried Semtex). Shatters things, not much heat.Doing what this novel does (blow up a van) or what the final Daniel Craig Bond movie did (missiles with HE warheads) just scatters the bio weapon around. Imagine a drinking glass with yogurt painted on it; shoot it with a rifle, the yogurt (bio weapon stand in) will still be active cultures... Just on itty bitty pieces of the glass. Or van.So... Bad plot, bad writing, mediocre characters, lousy knowledge of anything spy craft / bang bang / violence related, logic inconsistencies... I suppose the author may have gotten better, but given the high rating on Amazon of this book I doubt it.