Direct Action (Mass Market Paperback)

~ John Weisman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A great read!" (Oliver North )

Product Description

In this compulsive page-turner, six-time New York Times bestselling author John Weisman blows the lid off one of Washington's deepest real-world secrets. The CIA, currently incapable of performing its core mission of supplying critical and time-sensitive human-based intelligence for the global war on terror, must now outsource the work to private contractors. Drawing on real-world crises and actual CIA operations, Direct Action takes readers deep inside this new and unreported covert warfare that is being fought on a daily basis by anonymous shadow warriors all across the globe.

Racing against the clock and shuttling between Washington, Paris, and the Middle East, one of those shadow warriors, former CIA case officer Tom Stafford, must slip below the radar to uncover, target, and neutralize a deadly al-Qa'ida bombmaker before the assassin can launch simultaneous multiple attacks against America and the West. And as if that weren't enough, Stafford must simultaneously open a second front and mount a clandestine war against the CIA itself, because for mysterious and seemingly inexplicable reasons the people at the very top of the Central Intelligence Agency want him to fail.

The characters and operations in Direct Action are drawn from true-life CIA personnel and their real-world missions. With Direct Action, John Weisman confirms once again Joseph Wambaugh's claim that "nobody writes better about the dark and dirty world of the CIA and black ops."

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Avon (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060758252
• ISBN-13: 978-0060758257
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #661,646 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the 9/11 Commission Reports, March 7, 2008

By	John - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I kept having to remind myself that I am reading fiction, because this novel is so authentic. From the dsyfunctional CIA that is run by careerist bureaucrats who then have to "outsource" and "offshore" the work to ex-agents, to depictions of what a real Israeli interrogation cell is like on the inside, I found this novel to be excellent. It has the ring of truth to it. I also like it that the main character is not an expert in everything all at once. At one point, the author states that Tom has not shot a gun in 10 years. That to me is more realistic than the "Bourne" type guy, who, next to being able to speak Russian, German, French, and Thai fluently, also is a killer with a gun, and also has ridiculous martial arts skills that it would take 10 years of intense study to attain, etc. No one can be good at everything.

I really like this realistic novel of the reality of how the world works. The line by the Israeli about the U.S. being too soft on terrorists and criminals in general (letting murders get degrees from inside prison, as if they are in college, etc.) is bound to be disliked by liberals, but I also doubt that many liberals are going to read this book. I liked it a lot. To me, the book has the ring of the authentic.

And I am the kind of guy who likes to read novels and then point out stuff that is not consistent with reality (handguns referred to as "automatic pistols", etc. The author doesn't do any of that).

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written, tired plot, January 9, 2007

By	El Rayo (Southern California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

The bumbling CIA, and outsourced retired agents winning the day, has become a cliche in this genre. This book however, is well writen, and provides a special insight into the Israli/Jewish, special forces, situation and mindset.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Take it or leave it? Leave it, February 22, 2009

By	WB, Zeno - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

[There's a summary of the plot in the "Editorial Reviews - Product escription" of this page, so I won't repeat it here].

Reviewer John writes "I kept having to remind myself that I am reading fiction, because this novel is so authentic ... ". He's totally right, and that's the trouble. For a thriller, this is (IMO, of course) very, very boring: I think half the space is taken up by remarks or thoughts of one character on another, or the author himself, saying something like "Now, if this were a detective novel/whodunit/spy story/thriller/etc., then the hero would do such and such, but in the real world things are different, so the hard way to do it is ... , and that's exactly what XYZ did ... ".
So I don't dispute that this book is the real thing, and that real events just don't develop as in a page-turner but consist mostly of drudgery, of sifting through interminable lists, etc., but if I want to know about the real thing, then I read about the real thing, and not fictive characters involved in fictive ops.

I don't doubt for a moment that the tome is entertainig to intelligence buffs, but I'm not one of them (I mean, up to a point I like to read about codes, spies' bios, Intelligence Agencies' stories and so forth, but from books referring to the actual thing). Moreover, this particular story isn't totally realistic either, but has its own unbelievably efficient and tough Mossad agent, which is scarcely credible precisely because in real life agents are stupid like you and me (alright, only me).

And to top everything off nicely, the really important event that constitutes the book's denouement comes as a surprise, an afterthought, since the story's backbone is about another thing entirely for maybe nine-tenths of its length.

To conclude, this is the last thing I'll read from this author, at least as fiction (it suddendly occurrs to me as I'm writing the review that this type of narrative is really a branch of the historical novel genre; but if you've read, say, "Sunne in Splendour" or "The Golden Warrior", you'll understand the difference between a masterpiece and a run-of-the-mill product).