Customer Reviews

The Prisoner of Guantánamo

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Baltimore Sun Reporter Dan Fesperman is not only a terrific newsman but a first-rate novelist as well (The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, The Warlord's Son). His stories are as current as this morning's news and while sometimes troubling also thoroughly entertaining.

Our setting is the Guantanamo base or Gitmo, the military originated slang name for this outpost. Gitmo,, as the world knows, is where suspected terrorists are incarcerated and interrogated. Life here doesn't amount to much as the suicide rate makes clear. "There had been five attempts inside the wire in the last two weeks, none successful and more than thirty since the prisoners first arrived."

Revere Falk is a former FBI agent now an interrogator at Gitmo. He qualified for this posting because of his fluency in Arabic, and his desire to keep some secrets in his past. For company he has found a career military woman who shares his assignment.

Routine changes when the body of an American soldier, a reservist who was assigned to Guantanamo, is found on a Cuban beach. It's not long into Falk's investigation of this death before he realizes that what he had hoped to keep secret may be revealed.

There a lot of action, much political maneuvering, and a wrenching picture of what can happen during the war on terror to be found in The Prisoner of Guantanamo plus, in this case, a riveting reading delivered by actor David Colacci.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

Read this book. If you're absolutely convinced the US government is systematically torturing detainees at Gitmo, you won't like the book. The villains will satisfy, because they're representative of the conservative crazies in Washington, but the real way the camps work is the way the protagonist does it. Fesperman does play up the interagency conflict, without communicating that FBI, CIA and military intel folks are looking for different things, and perhaps for artistic purposes doesn't explain that the "other agencies" are minority parts of the real picture.

Read this book. Remember that it's a novel, with a fiction plot played out against a background that is absolutely true to life. The spies and wingnuts and crimes make a good story. The writing style may be disconcerting, the plot is convoluted, the final resolution isn't entirely clean or satisfying, but the book is well worth reading.

The FBI sends Agent Revere Falk to Guantomino Bay as an Arabic translator since he is proficient in communicating in that language. His specific assignment involves a Yemeni prisoner Adnan with questionable ties to al-Qaeda. However, his efforts to break Adnan halts at least for now when the corpse of an American NCO washes onto beach on the Cuban side of the barrier.

Falk is assigned to investigate the death of the reservist sergeant. He quickly learns the victim had been a Michigan banker in his civilian life, but was recently receiving letters from his family involving Cayman Island financial institutions. Pressure mounts on Falk to finish immediately as the military wants this incident to go away. Other demands also rise from a surprising local source that knows of Falk's indiscretions as a young marine years ago. Though he keeps digging, hints of culpability are tossed at him like Improvised Explosive Devices as someone like him must take the fall; rank has its privileges nor will it be those connected.

This is a terrific thriller that provides readers with an insightful look at Gitmo from what seems an insider's perspective. The descriptions are so detailed and powerful Cheney will probably accuse Dan Fesperman of abetting the enemy. However that depth also at times overwhelms the prime investigation plot as the fascination with the prison is the star draw. Fans will appreciate this deep look at Guantomino Bay inside a fine whodunit or perhaps better said is a fine whodunit inside a deep prison tour.

Harriet Klausner

This story is excellently written. It balances well character, plot, tone, tension, foreshadowing, and resolution. Its tension depends on the reader's belief that the FBI hero's investigation into a probable homicide could be undermined from "above"--State Department, Defense, CIA, the Marine commander of Guantanmo, Cuban intelligence directorate, or his lover. The reader never knows which side is ascendant, or where the hero is going to land. His personal isolation is symbolized near the end in his solo navigation of a stolen motorboat from Guantanamo to an uninhabited lighthouse island elsewhere in the Caribbean, through a tropical storm.

I thought this was a terrific book. So did The Economist, which reviewed this in August 2006 and recommended it.

I was amazed by "The Prisoner..." I think it has the best dialogue in a thriller (or pretty much any literature for that matter) that I've read. Its got a sophisticated and original plot that is still easy to understand and doesn't grate for pretentious complexity. I thought the allusion to certain recent historical figures was brilliantly done and the build-up towards them exquisite. Its got nice human touches, particulary the whole plot around "Dad", but also the relationships with Pam, "Paco" and Bo. The ambiguities in these relationships add to the realism, the suspence and to the quality of the book. "Prisoner..." has great twists-turns-and-turn-around-agains to leave you dizzy yet enthralled. It is very rare in a thriller that I read thru to the very last page and still really care whats going on - in this case I absolutely did. I will certainly be looking towards more by Fesperman, and hoping he gets a little more popular to go with his critical acclaim.

Fesperman does not disappoint with this one! It is timely, fast moving and exciting. Weaving some current events into a slightly different setting, he has writtern a real thriller! I recommend it highly!

Newly available in trade paper, Fesperman's chilling tale of murder and skullduggery at the insular, claustrophobic detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay remains timely.

A sense of foreboding hangs over the narrative from its start: "On the first day of his transition from captor to captive, Revere Falk stood barefoot on a starlit lawn at 4 a.m., still naively confident of his place among those who asked the questions and hoarded the secrets."

FBI interrogator Falk, an Arabic speaker, has just come from a nearly break-through session with his primary prisoner, a young Yemeni who has been slowly opening up to him. Furious after a CIA officer thoughtlessly interrupted the session, Falk is pacing his lawn when the MPs arrive to enlist his help in tracking down a missing sergeant.

Come morning, the young man's body washes ashore on the Cuban side of the fence, which, given the beach position of his neatly stacked belongings and the normal course of currents, is impossible. The military writes it off as an accident but Falk persists, sure the man was murdered.

The tense, murky atmosphere of turf battles, paranoia, rivalries and distrust heightens as a shadowy trio from Washington arrives (including an old buddy of Falk's). An Arabic-speaking interrogator - the Arabic speakers are universally mistrusted - is arrested and rumors begin to fly.

Falk's attitude toward the place, like his attitude to so much else, is clear-sighted but ambivalent. He vehemently disagrees with harsh interrogation tactics - mostly because he sees them as useless - and had complained about them to the mainland brass, but when nothing was done he backed off.

A loner with secrets of his own, Falk knows what it's like to be bullied and manipulated. He thinks his lover Pam, a fellow interrogator, might be the real thing, but also knows it might also just be proximity. Though he left his Deer Isle, Maine, home years before and never looked back, Falk has kept his love of the sea and relaxes best in a boat, which is also the only safe place to have a private conversation.

Fesperman, a journalist who reported on Gitmo for the "Baltimore Sun," captures the feel of a military base on foreign, hostile soil; a place contained by water and fencing, a prison enclosing a prison, a toe of an island bathed in stultifying heat and humidity, with too little to do, no place to go, too few women, and too many secrets.

Though the novel builds to a fabulous crescendo of action at the end, Fesperman relies more on crafty maneuverings, dirty tricks and political double-dealing for suspense. He immerses the reader in this sick, dull and dangerous place and fully allies us with Falk as he picks his way through a growing minefield; eyes wide open in the murk.

Masterfully written, timely and wholly absorbing, this is another winner from a writer who has been delivering thoughtful, insightful, suspenseful novels since he first immersed readers in war torn Sarajevo with homicide detective Vlado Petric in "Lie in the Dark."

I've read Dan Fesperman's previous three novels (and completely enjoyed them) and was somewhat disappointed with "The Prisoner of Guantanamo". First, the plot was disjointed and complex and second, as a reader, I never felt compelled to 'root' for any of the main characters. Unlike the protagonist Vlado Petric (the first two novels) and the two main characters in "The Warlords Son", Revere Falk (the protagonist in The Prisoner of Guantanamo), while likeable enough just wasn't compelling for me to get too invested in. I realize that the position he was in...relative to the army, FBI, State Department etc. created conflicts for him, but I would have expected those conflicts to create a more passionate charcter.

This author is definitely getting better and is beginning to remind me of Alan Furst but Fesperman positions his work in more contemporary settings and events. Here in his fourth, he takes the reader to Guantánamo Bay where we follow translator Revere Falk, an FBI interrogator. His past as a young, naive Marine plays an integral role that involves Cuban intelligence. This plot intersects with the American Intelligence community, Al-Qaeda, and the war on terrorism to create a layered mystery. It intrigues, the characters are believable and suitably suspicious, and the pace brisk enough. There is also sufficient detail to add credibility and this reflects the author's past as a hot-spot journalist who chased the true story. I look forward to reading his next book, The Amateur Spy.

This book doesn't portray atrocities which many believe occur at Guantanamo, but it does give insight into legitimate interrogation procedures whle telling a very engrossing and believable story of political ambition, deceit, and villainy. It's rather heavy reading and the ending is a bit of a letdown. Don't expect a thriller because it isn't. But it's definitely a treat for the intelligent.