The Ghost War

✍ Scribed by Alex Berenson

• Publisher: PENGUIN USA;Jove Books
• Year: 2008;2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 245 KB
• Edition: Jove premium ed
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

CIA agent John Wells returns, in a novel that reaches beyond today's headlines to foretell dangers yet to come, from the author of The Faithful Spy - "one of the best spy stories ever told" (The Wall Street Journal).

Alex Berenson's 2006 debut was one of the most acclaimed suspense novels of the year, "the best spy thriller in a long, long while" (The Kansas City Star). The Ghost War proves that he is no longer a brilliant newcomer but a master of the art.

In The Faithful Spy , John Wells became the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al-Qaeda, but his handlers became distrustful of him, and he of them. He had to stop a devastating terrorist attack nearly alone.

Now Wells is back in Washington. His wounds have healed, but his mind is far from clear. He is restless, uneasy in his skin, and careless with his safety. When the CIA finds evidence of a surge in Taliban activity, backed by an unknown foreign power, it takes little to convince Wells to return to Afghanistan to investigate. But what he discovers there is far from what he expected.

A deadly power play in China, a mission to North Korea gone terribly wrong, an Iran determined to go nuclear, a mole within the ranks of the CIA who is about to light a fuse, the consequences of which he cannot possibly understand-the world is hurtling toward confrontation. And, this time, there may be nothing John Wells can do to stop it. Real-world threats, authentic details, a scenario as dramatic as it is plausible-The Ghost War is another "timely reminder of the extremely precarious way we live now" (The Washington Post).

From Publishers Weekly

Having foiled an al-Qaeda plot targeting Times Square in 2006's The Faithful Spy (which won an Edgar Award for best first novel), maverick CIA agent John Wells confronts a very different threat in this pulse-pounding sequel from New York Times reporter Berenson. When the CIA's efforts to extract Dr. Sung Kwan, a North Korean scientist and an invaluable source on Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions, result in the deaths of Kwan and the rescue team, Wells's significant other, Jennifer Exley, searches to identify the person in U.S. intelligence who compromised Kwan's security. Meanwhile, Wells returns to Afghanistan, the scene of much of the action in The Faithful Spy , to find out what outside country has been helping the Taliban reassert itself. While the mole hunt will be familiar to genre buffs and the characters and the perils they face aren't as nuanced as those in John le Carré or even David Ignatius, the author's plausible scenario distinguishes this from most spy thrillers. Author tour. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Seasoned narrator Guidall takes listeners on a global journey of espionage and intrigue, breathing life into CIA agent John Wells, whose voice teems with emotion. Wells’ assignment involves ferreting out a CIA mole, and the tenseness of the task is evident in Guidall’s terse tones. When it becomes clear that the mole is selling secrets to the Chinese, and Wells tries to recover a CIA undercover agent in North Korea, Guidall instills Wells’ voice with carefully placed pauses. These pauses highlight Wells’ confusion and despair at the realization that a conflict between world powers may be imminent, and there seems to be nothing he can do to stop it. Berenson’s follow-up to The Faithful Spy (2007) is a winner. --Sheri Melnick