This was a qualified 3-star read for me. The format was not at all what I was expecting, and I found that extremely disappointing at first. I very much wanted to stay in the here and now with these characters; I found the current mystery far more interesting, and was disappointed every time we got tossed back in time in a flashback. While I understand that Justine & Hawker's story is one deeply rooted in the past, and that we needed to see that to appreciate what was happening in their present, it left me disconnected from the conflict in either time frame. Choppy sentences were sprinkled between writing that managed to grab my attention enough to (mostly) overlook the occasional stumbles. I don't know, maybe the sentences I found abrupt and more than a little clunky were meant to convey tension. That during adrenaline-filled moments our perceptions are like camera snaps: quick, jarring, capturing impressions of one moment in time. I say that in an attempt to give those moments the benefit of the doubt, because that was not how they worked for me, and I want to believe that there was a point to the writing lacking narrative flow. Or maybe it was Justine thinking in her sometimes broken English, which, come to think of it, is kind of ridiculous for such an accomplished spy to have. I may be over-thinking this. I liked Hawker and Justine well enough, even though I never truly loved either of them. It was the (mostly) deft writing that kept me reading, not any deep desire to see an HEA or to discover who was behind the murders/frame-job. If I do decide to pick up another of Bourne's novels, maybe that's when I'll fall in love with Hawker, like so many other reviewers seem to have done.
