From Publishers Weekly
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.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
