George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger

This is an easy-to-read book about a group of spies who delivered messages to George Washington about British troop movements and other details of the Revolutionary War. While I enjoyed the story, I found the writing to be scattered and unfocused. With better framing, and a more chronological approach, this could have been a much better book.

I found that the story about the spies was interesting and definitely worthy of a book. It's clear from Amazon reviews that it's fairly popular, so maybe the issues I have with it aren't widely held. But I will list them here:

1) There are no footnotes or endnotes citing where any of his information came from.
2) The writing is poor; even his co-author couldn't help with the awkward prose.
3) The narrative is confusing and jumps all over the place.
4) Every time George Washington is mentioned he's in a different place. First they're delivering information to him in Connecticut, then New Jersey. No information is provided about the larger context of the war and why or how he was in each locale.
5) The author has supplied dialog for many of the characters. He claims they're all based on his written sources, but since those sources aren't cited, there's no way to tell. The dialog supplied is very stiff and awkward sounding.

This would have made a much better historical novel. Perhaps Kilmeade should have just taken the leap and written a novel, supplying all of the dialog he wanted and not worrying about getting the facts exactly right or citing his sources. The book includes 8 pages of illustrations, a short list of sources, and an index.

Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger. George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution. New York: Sentinel, 2013. 252 pages. ISBN 9781595231109.