Point of View

Tom Rob Smith tells his novel “Agent 6” from the third-person limited-omniscient perspective. The novel deals with a series of events and encounters with numerous people over the course of 31 years, from 1950 to 1981. As such, the third-person narrator provides a consistent and unifying voices that ties together the disparate ends of the novel. The third-person narrative mode also provides the author the ability to speak at great length about the backgrounds and motives of various characters unknown to the other characters, and also provides the ability for the author to provide good historical context to the situations in which his characters find themselves. The limited-omniscient aspect of the narrative lends a sense of reality to the novel, for no character will be able to know everything at all times. The limited-omniscient aspect also provides for a degree of mystery and suspense, as the reader only learns...