…but this one, The Spy, by James Fenimore Cooper, we recommend with certain reservations. It is not an easy read. Oh, it's a pretty good yarn, an adventure set in the American revolutionary war written only 40 years after that war ended. And it's a book of some literary interest, being considered by some the first inherently American novel ever (and one that occasionally pops up on lists of great spy stories).
It's written in an archaic language with long-vanished sensibilities, full of impossibly dashing soldiers and women constantly blushing and weeping (full of "sorrows," Cooper notes, "and varied emotions"). Yet it comes to an entirely satisfying conclusion if one hangs around long enough to reach the end.
For its price (free), it's worth at least a look.
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