The Faithful Spy: A Novel (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper)) | 
| Author: Alex Berenson
Publisher: Random House Large Print
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  91 reviews
Sales Rank: 1148750
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Lrg
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0739326570
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780739326572
ASIN: 0739326570
Publication Date: April 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: LARGE PRINT. GOOD CONDITION. FORMER LIBRARY BK. A WONDERFUL BOOK!!
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Product Description
“A well-crafted page-turner that addresses the most important issue of our time. It will keep you reading well into the night.”–Vince Flynn
A New York Times reporter has drawn upon his experience covering the occupation in Iraq to write the most gripping and chillingly plausible thriller of the post-9/11 era. Alex Berenson’s debut novel of suspense, The Faithful Spy, is a sharp, explosive story that takes readers inside the war on terror as fiction has never done before.
John Wells is the only American CIA agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda. Since before the attacks in 2001, Wells has been hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, biding his time, building his cover.
Now, on the orders of Omar Khadri–the malicious mastermind plotting more al Qaeda strikes on America–Wells is coming home. Neither Khadri nor Jennifer Exley, Wells’s superior at Langley, knows quite what to expect.
For Wells has changed during his years in the mountains. He has become a Muslim. He finds the United States decadent and shallow. Yet he hates al Qaeda and the way it uses Islam to justify its murderous assaults on innocents. He is a man alone, and the CIA–still reeling from its failure to predict 9/11 or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq–does not know whether to trust him. Among his handlers at Langley, only Exley believes in him, and even she sometimes wonders. And so the agency freezes Wells out, preferring to rely on high-tech means for gathering intelligence.
But as that strategy fails and Khadri moves closer to unleashing the most devastating terrorist attack in history, Wells and Exley must somehow find a way to stop him, with or without the government’s consent.
From secret American military bases where suspects are held and “interrogated” to basement laboratories where al Qaeda’s scientists grow the deadliest of biological weapons, The Faithful Spy is a riveting and cautionary tale, as affecting in its personal stories as it is sophisticated in its political details. The first spy thriller to grapple squarely with the complexities and terrors of today’s world, this is a uniquely exciting and unnerving novel by an author who truly knows his territory.
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Chapter 1
Present Day
North-West Frontier, on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan
sheikh gul scowled at his congregation. “These days every Muslim must fight jihad,” he said in Pashtun, his voice rising. “When the Mongols invaded Baghdad, it didn’t help the people of Baghdad that they were pious Muslims. They died at the swords of the infidels.”
The sheikh threw his hands over his head.
“Now Islam is under siege again. Under siege in the land of the two mosques, and the land of the two rivers”—Saudi Arabia and Iraq. “Under siege here in Pakistan, where our leader works for Americans and Jews. Everywhere we are under siege,” said the sheikh, Mohammed Gul. He was a short, bearded man with a chunky body hidden under a smooth brown robe. His voice seemed to belong to someone much larger. Inside the mosque, a simple brick building whose walls were covered in flaking white paint, the worshippers murmured agreement and drew together. Brothers in arms. But their assent enraged the sheikh further.
“You say, ‘Yes, yes.’ But what do you do when prayers are finished? Do you sacrifice yourselves? You go home and do nothing. Muslims today love this world and hate death. We have abandoned jihad!” the sheikh shouted. He stopped to look out over the crowd and wipe his brow. “And so Allah has subjugated us. Only when we sacrifice ourselves will we restore glory to Islam. On that day Allah will finally smile on us.”
Except it sounds like none of us will be around to see it, Wells thought. In the years that Wells had listened to Gul’s sermons, the sheikh had gotten angrier and angrier. The source of his fury was easy to understand. September 11 had faded, and Islam’s return to glory remained distant as ever. The Jews still ruled Israel. The Americans had installed a Shia government in Iraq, a country that had always been ruled by Sunnis. Yes, Shias were Muslim too. But Shia and Sunni Muslims had been at odds since the earliest days of Islam. To Osama and his fellow fundamentalist Sunnis—sometimes called Wahhabis—the Shia were little better than Jews.
Al Qaeda, “the Base” of the revolution, had never recovered from the loss of its own base in Afghanistan, Wells thought. When the Taliban fell, Qaeda’s troops fled east to the North-West Frontier, the mountainous border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Wells had narrowly escaped an American bomb at Tora Bora, the last big fight of the Afghan war. He liked to imagine that the bomb had been guided by Glen Holmes, who had swung it away from the hut where Wells hid.
But the United States hadn’t closed the noose at Tora Bora, for reasons Wells had never understood. Thousands of jihadis escaped. In 2002, they reached the mountains of the North-West Frontier, so named by the British, since the area was the northwest border of colonial India. The North-West Frontier was a wild land ruled by Pashtuns, devout Muslims who supported Qaeda’s brand of jihad, and was effectively closed to Pakistani and American soldiers. Even the Special Forces could operate there only for short stretches.
So Qaeda survived. But it did not thrive. Osama and his lieutenants scurried between holes, occasionally releasing tapes to rouse the faithful. Every few months the group launched an attack. It had blasted a train station in Madrid, blown up hotels in Egypt and subways in London, attacked oil workers in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, it fought the American occupiers. But nothing that had shaken the world like September 11.
Meanwhile Wells and his fellow jihadis eked out a miserable existence. In theory, Qaeda’s paymasters had arranged for Pashtun villagers to house them. In r
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| Customer Reviews: Read 86 more reviews...
 Faithful Spy July 17, 2008
I typically do not like spy novels, this is the best one I have ever read. Worth the read.
A homecoming, sort of July 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
John Wells has been away from the United States and his home state of Montana for a decade. Since 1996, he's been a deep cover agent in Afghanistan for the Central Intelligence Agency. So deep that he leads a band of Qaeda guerrillas and is known to them as Jalal. He's even met bin Laden. John's only message to his Langley CIA controller, Jennifer Exley, was back in 2001.
Now, Wells is going home on the orders of the senior Qaeda leadership. Once there, he'll be expected to assist Khadri, a fiendishly clever and devious Qaeda planner, in carrying out a major act of violence against America.
To the head honchos of the CIA, John is an enigma and not to be trusted. Hell, he even carries around a copy of the Koran and prays to Allah. Now, what sort of red, white and blue American does that? As for Khadri, he doesn't trust anybody much less one born of the Great Satan.
Wells is truly on his own.
Is THE FAITHFUL SPY the best espionage thriller I've ever read? Um ... no. But, as the debut novel from author Alex Berenson, it's exceptional in its scope, presentation, and imaginativeness. It's written with the flair and confidence of a more experienced author. Not since Lee Child's first Jack Reacher thriller, Persuader, have I been so impressed. Four stars, therefore, with the expectation that his next one, The Ghost War, will be even better as the Wells and Exley characters gain more definition. Four stars leaves room for the expected improvement.
My single niggle of dissatisfaction comes from the fact that John didn't fully engage my empathy and sympathy as some other fictional protagonists have done in the past even from book one. Child's Reacher and Elleston Trevor's (aka Adam Hall) Quiller come immediately to mind as both personae have endearing subtleties; Quiller had standing instructions with his employer to send roses to Moira in the event of his death, while Reacher doesn't even know how to iron a shirt. I expect Wells to grow on me; we'll see.
 Some half decent writing pulls this book out of the gutter July 12, 2008
I picked up the Faithful Spy because it was getting such dynamite reviews. Some of what is here in this book merrits such praise. However, the plot and characters bring down the house with their overboard ambitions.
Its sort of odd that this book which tries so hard to be one of the quiet thrillers that doesn't over-whelm the reader as if it were Die Hard Seven, is in the end overblown. Yet components of this novel just are so far fetched that you start groaning after a while.
One of my least favorite tricks that authors use is in full glory here. That is skipping from one character to another. Its not done terribly here, however it ends up taking the reader out of the flow very often and you end up not being as drawn in as you could have if this story were created in a linear timeline fashion. See Harlan Coben for an author who pull this off well.
I think that Berenson has a good future laid out before himself as an author. I just hope he continues to struggle with the genre medium and tries to push some boundaries with his next books.
No Robert Ludlum But............... June 30, 2008
I am a huge spy lover reader and in my opinion Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy are the two best of all time. I have been looking for another author and book about espionage and "The Faithful Spy" has it all. I am looking forward to his next novel and the series. I loved the book because it was easy to read and follow along with. Sometimes spy novels get so wrapped up in details it makes the plot seem pointless. However, this novel keeps the writing basic and exciting. The book is well written and keeps the action moving. The main character is very believable. If you are looking for a new spy novel author I think this is the one
One of the better thrillers I've read in a while. June 27, 2008
There's much to like about "The Faithful Spy". The story feels both credible and well researched. The central character is interesting and the plot maintains the suspense with plenty of unexpected twists. I've read a number of thrillers and this is one of the better ones.
It falls short of being a five star read for me. The beginning and end of the book are gripping, but it slows right down in the middle (when the lead character is largely absent from the action). The story covers a lot of ground, from the front in Afghanistan to interrogations in Diego Garcia, from behind the scenes at the CIA to secret terrorist cells in the US and Canada. This is a tricky balancing act and at times the pace got bogged down with explanations about US policy or by Berenson's need to personalize events by fleshing out even minor characters.
Nevertheless, a well written and exciting spy novel that feels extremely plausible. One of the better thrillers I've read in a while.
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