andrew stuttaford, reviewing the book in "the wall street journal", said while whittell was not comparable to tom wolfe, "bridge of spies" was like wolfe's "the right stuff" "with a peculiarly lethal twist". stuttaford said, "the true stars of mr. whittell's narrative are an extraordinary airplane and the men who flew it," though he felt that the author drew "somewhat heavy-handed parallels" in the lead-up to the iraq war in writing about the cold war period's contrasting intelligence and politics.