✍ Scribed by Alex Berenson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
From the #1 New York Times – bestselling author comes another remarkable novel of espionage today— and right around the corner.
Alex Berenson’s The Faithful Spy was declared “one of the best spy stories ever told” (The Wall Street Journal), and The Ghost War “mesmerizing . . . an extraordinary achievement. Wells is a complex blend of smarts, scars, cynicism and wile. And the book’s imaginings seem not so much ‘ripped from the headlines’ as eerily destined to be set in type for tomorrow’s” (The News & Observer). Berenson’s third novel, however, is his most masterful yet.*
It isn’t easy to steal warheads from the heart of Russia’s nuclear complex in Mayak. It requires a great deal of money, coordination, ingenuity, and sleight-of-hand, and just a touch of luck. But if you’re determined enough, anything is possible.*
It’s been a rough few years for CIA agent John Wells. The undercover work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the attack on the United States, the Chinese plot that could have led to war. Wells is exhausted, and his nights filled with disturbing dreams. But he knows he has no time for that. He has made many enemies, and the world won’t stay quiet for long.
Nevertheless, Wells is not prepared for what is about to happen. He and his colleague—and fiancée—Jennifer Exley are driving into work when traffic comes to a standstill, due to accidents on both bridges into Washington. A pretty big coincidence, he thinks, beginning to get a bad feeling—a feeling that only gets worse when he spots the red motorcycle zooming up between cars toward him. Before the day is over, several people will be dead or severely injured, Exley among them, and Wells will be a man possessed.
The attackers are Russian, and it is to Russia that Wells must follow the trail. He finds what he’s looking for—but also a great deal more. A plan of almost unimaginable consequences is in motion, and Wells has no idea if he has discovered it in time. The last few years have been rough indeed, but the next few weeks will be much, much worse.
Real-world threats, authentic details, a scenario as dramatic as it is chillingly plausible, Alex Berenson’s new novel is another “timely reminder of the extremely precarious way we live now” (The Washington Post).
Bestseller Berenson's well-plotted and thoughtful third thriller to feature CIA agent John Wells (after The Ghost War) finds Wells and his fellow CIA agent and fiancée, Jenny Exley, living happily together in Washington, D.C., content to devote themselves to fighting the forces of evil. One morning, while stuck in traffic on their way to CIA headquarters, men on motorcycles attack them in their minivan. Exley suffers a serious gunshot injury in an act of revenge by minions of Pierre Kowalski, an enemy from an earlier book. Meanwhile, jihadists bent on destroying America steal two small atomic bombs. These extremely clever villains, per Berenson's style, aren't mad dog idiots but credible characters with reasons, at least from their own perspective, to be doing the great evil they're planning. Fast and furious when it needs to be, this is a welcome addition to an excellent series. Berenson won an Edgar for his first novel, The Faithful Spy. (Feb.)
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John Wells saves the world for the third time in as many books, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Islamist jihadists manage to steal some fissionable material out of a remote Russian weapons depot, intending to build a crude atom bomb to unleash on the great Satan. Meanwhile, Wells’ love interest is nearly killed by an old enemy, sending our dour, driven hero eastward on a one-man mission of vengeance, even as the terrorists head steadily westward with their awful freight. Wells has lost some of his promise as a devout Muslim action hero (The Faithful Spy, 2006), an intriguing premise completely jettisoned here. But while Wells has grown two-dimensional, the supporting cast of holy warriors and their reluctant assistants (such as Gregor, a pathetically hulking weak link on the weapons depot’s payroll) are fleshed out and motivated far more than your typical baddies. Oddly enough, it is the terrorists’ desperate nuclear caper, plausibly detailed and convincingly problematic, that keeps the reader caring, and guessing, until the end and that keeps this series in the first rank of international thrillers. --David Wright
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