Customer Reviews

The Midnight House (A John Wells Novel)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Midnight House is Alex Berensen's fourth installment in the series featuring CIA agent John Wells. As the story opens, Wells is in self-imposed seclusion as he attempts to recover physically and emotionally from previous action. Quickly, however, he is called back to Washington DC to help investigate the murders of several members of a secret terrorist interrogation unit. Although initially reluctant to reengage, he is rapidly pulled into an investigation filled with undefined allegiances and potential conspiracies.

Start to finish, this work moves along with pace. As Wells moves forward with his investigation, Berensen frequently goes back in time to slowly shed increasing amounts of light on the Midnight House and its participants. The Midnight House is not without its action and plot twists, but it is different than the previous installments of the series. In Midnight House, Wells' action is more often cerebral than it is physical, with much of the intense action left to other characters. All-in-all, this story broadens the Wells character in a good way. While this work could stand on its own, my recommendation would be to read all four books in order for maximum enjoyment.

This is another good book from Alex Berenson. Once again the hero of this action-espinoige novel is John Wells.
The U.S. government has set up a house in Poland called the Midnight House. This house is used for interrogation
purposes. Jihadists from the war in Afghanistan are captured and brought to the Midnight House to be interrogated
(or tortured). This facility is staffed by CIA personnel.Army Rangers, and other personnel. The name of this group is 673. There are 10 members of this working group. When 7 members of the 10 are murdered the head of the
CIA brings John Wells in to investigate the killings and determine who is responsible. Wells travels around the
globe to trace down leads. He is assaulted and arrested. It turns out to be a rough investigation. Wells starts
narrowing in on the killer. The identity of the real killer will surprise you. He also discovers deception and conspiracy wound into this plot. This is a very good book that will give you insight into interrogation centers. Be sure to buy it.

I have read all four of the John Wells novels and this is the best in the series. While some might prefer slam-bang action and fears of the imminent destruction of the world, what I really liked about Midnight House was the psychological intrigue. In a good spy novel you need twists and turns including it never being clear whether some characters are "good" or "bad" and this book has plenty of that. The pain of the interrogators seemed real and Wells investigation of the murders central to the plot kept me guessing.

Who guards the guards?
The Midnight House by Alex Berenson is a very well crafted philosophical action thriller. Mr. Berenson tackles one of today's most controversial topics: Torture. Enter protagonist CIA agent John Wells to find out exactly what happened at the super secret rendition Midnight House, and why the interrogators stationed there are being killed off. Weaving intense action with the current hot topic of interrogational torture, Mr. Berenson writes a fast paced story dealing with all the difficult and seamy psychological aspects of rendition and international espionage. Mr. Berenson's tale is broad brushed and details all the political, psychological, and philosophical aspects of today's complex world of international espionage and terror: From the frontline Delta Operators to the highest levels of Homeland Security. Simply stated, everyone at every level is affected by the over exposed world of detainee interrogation and manipulation. In today's world of hyper-politicization it matters not if the information obtained is actionable, what matters most is the process. Protagonist John Wells must deal with these difficult thorny questions and as Mr. Berenson points out there are NO easy answers. Just more questions.

A page turner but not for the normal reasons. This is a thinking person's examination of the more controversial aspects of the global war on terror. Mr. Berenson does a very good job of questioning just who are the real terrorists: The jihadists or the operators trying to catch and stop them? And what exactly is torture and does it have a place in current world events? I have my views, but it is for the reader to make their own moral judgments. All in all a finely crafted work concerning one of today's most controversial subjects.

Character development was excellent. Mr. Berenson did a fine job fleshing out numerous psychologically complex characters. The protagonist John Wells is the new younger version of Vince Flynn's explosive Mitch Rapp. Kudos for that alone. Also, high marks for no gratuitous sex, language or violence. Just a great storyline well done.

Hearty recommend for The Midnight House. Mr. Berenson gets better with each new novel. I like how he mixes his action with thought provoking questions. He challenges the reader to think and make value judgments! This keeps the reader engaged at all literary levels.
Watch out Vince Flynn you are going to be pushed by Alex Berenson and competition always brings out the best. I hate buying hardback fiction at today's exorbitant prices so check the local library as I'm sure they have a copy. I am expectantly looking forward to Mr. Berenson's next John Wells novel.

I've been a fan of the idea of Alex Berenson's novels, but have always had a reason to stop short of really liking his work. With The Midnight House, I'm still left looking for a breakout Berenson work - Mr Berenson always seems to force me to qualify his stories with a "but".

TMH doesn't suffer from the silliness that plagued each of the earlier works in different ways - Hollywood ending in one, implausible sleuthing in another, etc. On one level, TMH seeks to be a deliberately-paced whodunnit; the thrill is in the hunt. On another level, as the back story of the Midnight House plays against the present day search for a killer, Mr Berenson does a nice job of showing the reader the gray areas in the Intelligence business. Are the agents who apply tactics of torture sadistic thugs, or are they patriots seeking to protect their country by any means necessary? What is the thought process that goes into these activities? How are these actions justified by the people involved? Mr Berenson gives us a decent story here, but...

I felt the language in TMH was, in a word, trite. In spite of the subject matter - especially in the first several chapters - TMH was a difficult novel to take seriously. While this is annoying from a journalist, and demonstrates little growth in Mr Berenson's skill as a novelist, another area bothered me more. Mr Berenson asks the reader to accept the reinvention of the preceding novels' well-established relationships in order to cast John Wells as an investigator rather than the operative he is. It's a different kind of implausibility - one that, really, would not affect new Berenson readers.

As with its predecessors, I liked The Midnight House, although not as much as I would have liked.

I have enjoyed other books by this author but this one disappointed. Wells has little to do with it and the descriptions of the Midnight House are tiresome and repetitive. The ending was contrived and seemed to be something inserted with regret that something better hadn't come to mind.

This is the best story of Berenson's hero John Wells and I found it to be an average read for the genre. So for me it was an Ok--3 star read and it was a pretty good story although it had a few problems. Overall, I enjoyed the story and kept wanting to know what would happen next. Dialogue is not the strong suit here. The characters need more work but it was an entertaining read although once we get near the end everything suddenly moves very rushed.

If you want a simple spy/CIA/action/thriller this might fit the bill for you, not great, but it will keep you engaged, as you get near the end you may start to wonder about how contrived and rushed the ending is.

The book was published a year ago. The descriptions of Cairo could have been done this week. Fiction that tells the truth. And a good little story to go along with it. A fine series. An author who is very, very good.

It was indeed a thriller. Keeping up with the action and the character was wild. I felt so sorry for the kid that just wanted to play his video game and his whole life was destroyed!!

Alex Berenson's "The Midnight House" is a terrific cerebral thriller about the CIA, "AfPak" (aka al Qaeda, Afghanistan, and Pakistan), and a secret CIA prison site in Poland. If this sounds like something ripped from the pages of the New York Times, well, Berenson *is* a NY Times reporter, and the basic framework of the novel bears more than passing resemblance to events of the last decade.

The narrative drive of "The Midnight House" is an effort by two CIA agents to find out who is killing former members of a secret CIA squad that had detained and interrogated high-level terrorism suspects in a secret prison in Poland. (In fact, the U.S. did run such secret prisons in Poland and Romania, among other countries, in which high-level al Qaeda members like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, were subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation tactics.) It's called the Midnight House because it's always midnight for the prisoners, who are subjected to brutal interrogations. Is it al Qaeda that's gunning for the former members of the interrogation squad? Or one of the surviving members who's trying to cover up something terrible that happened?

The writing is taut, and displays a reporter's eye for detail and efficient exposition. The shorthand codes in CIA cables, for example, are explained quickly and just enough to move the plot along with drowning the reader in unnecessary verbiage. I should say that I don't normally like novels that jump back and forth between different timelines, as this one does, but Berenson manages to pull it off without seeming like he's cheating the reader. (Often I find that authors who use the split timeline do so to generate suspense artificially.)

Finally, I gather this is the fourth novel in a series about CIA agent John Wells. I hadn't read the first three (I believe "The Faithful Spy" is the first one) but found it relatively easy to get into the storyline. There are references to events that have happened earlier, which I suppose means that at least one of the earlier books is spoiled for me, but this novel seems to be self-contained.

In short, I really enjoyed this novel. It's not as action packed as, say, books by Vince Flynn, but then, it's probably about 10,000 more realistic as well.