Bought especially for a Bookcrossing challenge, will be winging its way to the lucky recipient shortly.

Received in the 12 Days of Christmas Exchange - a perfect choice! Thank you, mysteriousmummy!

A gift in the BookCrossing 'Twelve Days of Christmas' exchange - it arrived with a box full of drumstick lollies, toy percussion instruments, drummer Christmas ornaments, and the like. And I managed to finish reading it within the twelve days of Christmas, so.

The relevance of the title does not become apparent until quite a long way through, and I don't wish to spoil anyone, so I won't explain. I will say that the plot involves a disgraced US Foreign Service officer working with a bunch of suspicious characters (my favourite sort of character!) to thwart terrorism. It took me a while to get into, but once the suspicious characters had shown up and the team had gelled, I was hooked. There were a couple of twists I didn't see coming, and, while the ultimate threat felt rather insubstantial, it was a reasonably suspenseful read.

There was quite a lot of anti-Muslim stereotyping in here. While this is hardly surprising given the subject matter, it did make me feel very uncomfortable.

I do wonder how different this novel would be had it been published in 2002 rather than 1998, mind you.

This book has been released as part of the BookCrossing.com project, which allows readers to follow the books they've loved and passed on as they travel through the wild. If you enjoy this book, please consider leaving a journal entry below saying where you found it, what you thought of it, and where it might be going next.

On the twelfth day of Christmas... I left this book on the table outside Abercrombie and Fitch in the remodelled Friary Shopping Centre. Enjoy!