Berenson,
Alex. The Faithful Spy. Random. Apr. 2006. c340p. ISBN 0-345-47899-1.
$24.95. Fiction.
John
Wells, a CIA special operations agent, was the first Westerner
to graduate from the al Qaeda camps near Kandahar. After years
spent fighting undercover in Afghanistan and Chechyna, he has
been sent home to execute an unknown mission. Now a Muslim
and a harsh judge of America’s decadence, he finds that
his CIA handlers no longer trust him. Even worse,
neither does his Pakistani contact, an expert bomber who has
prepared a series of devastating attacks on major U.S. cities.
When Wells escapes from the CIA safe house where he is being
interrogated, no one knows whether this double spy will stop
a planned attack or help carry it out. In his debut thriller,
investigative reporter Berenson has come up with an intriguing
premise. However, when a plot adheres this closely to today’s
headlines, the novel’s characters need to be truly convincing
and the suspense ratcheted up a step, or else one might
as well be reading a newspaper. The threats with which this
thriller deals—fertilizer bombs, the
plague, anthrax—are all too common, and a tepid romance
that seems to have no real foundation adds little to the mix.
Well written, but pretty standard stuff.