| | |  | Terrorism | Home » » The Faithful Spy: A Novel (John Wells) | | | | | | | 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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Average Customer Review:
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118 of 135 found the following review helpful:
 I Wouldn't Say It's Well-WrittenMay 22, 2006
By W. A. H.
Phenomenal, addictive, heart-pounding, exciting, interest-grabbing, but not well-writ--okay, it's incredibly well-written too.
VERY well-written.
I won't go into the plot, because all that is written up above.
What I will say though, is that spy novels are not my usual reading. But this one I took a chance on. It was written the way books should be written. It grabs the reader by the throat on page one and steams along at a steady, confident, pace.
Vince Flynn didn't lie when he said this book will have you reading into the night. I've lost a lot of sleep reading this book that refused to let me put it down. Sleep I'll never get back.
And with this book, I didn't mind at all.
If you like the fast-past, constant plot-twisting of 24, then I strongly suggest you pick up this book.
Mr. Berenson's writing is incredible, and the insights of the main character John Wells of the country he left so long ago are all at once biting, and hard to argue with.
The terrorist network is well thought out, the way they operate is utterly believable, and their cunning is horrifying.
This book is the definition of money well-spent. As you're reading this, you'll feel like the third person in the room. You'll feel like you're living all of it. This book is amazing.
For an author's first book this is nothing short of impressive. Hell, for an author's fifth book it would be nothing short of impressive. It's fast, furious, and what any good book should be--a thrill ride.
37 of 42 found the following review helpful:
TOTALLY ENGROSSING NARRATIONJun 09, 2006
By Gail Cooke
How's this for a scenario? A man, John Wells has given up all he loved - his wife, child, and his parents to become the only American CIA agent to infiltrate Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. He did this before 9/11 and has endured years of privation, living on a dreary, cold plateau in Pakistan. Constantly on guard, he has continually convinced other followers of bin Laden that he is, indeed, a traitor and has become a Muslim.
This sacrifice has been made in an effort to destroy the terrorist network. To date that has not been accomplished. Now, he learns there are plans for more attacks on the United States, assaults even more terrifying than the carnage at the World Trade Center. So, Wells must return home. However, when he appears at Langley, CIA officials have doubts. Can he really be trusted or has he become a turncoat in the intervening years?
One person believes in him and that is Jennifer Exley. It soon becomes clear that they alone must stop al Qaeda from carrying out 2 heinous plan.
Terrifying? Yes. Far too close to what might be the truth for comfort as Berenson, a reporter for The New York Times well knows.
John Heffernan, known as the official voice of the NHL and NFL network, gives a compact, deliberate, totally engrossing reading. His avoidance of any dramatics renders his narrative all the more powerful.
- Gail Cooke
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
4.5 stars, actually....Sep 20, 2006
By K. M.
"literary devotee"
September 11, 2001 woke America up to facing perils we had previously consigned to other parts of the world and to fiction. Now, a novel like "The Faithful Spy" isn't merely a diversion, a beach thriller to quicken adrenaline for fun. Now, the situations that author Alex Berenson sets in motion and "detonates" one way or another don't float above us in dispassionate entertainment mode only. No, reading about the passengers on a transatlantic flight who suddenly sight military fighters pacing their airliner makes our stomachs clench with sympathetic anxiety and a "but for the grace of God, it might be my flight" thought. As least that was my reaction. And shadowing the title character to his cliffhanger meetings with al Queda members, high-level and low, filled me with cold dread because I don't imagine the real men who follow Bin Laden being much different. John Wells, "The Faithful Spy," and his one-time handler, Jennifer Exley, are people who must balance on a very narrow moral ledge (about matters such as when to "justify" torture and killing) in the name of national security and survival. Their dilemmas are ones that are not and should not be solely fictional. Berenson's reporting experience in Iraq and his understanding of the strategic struggle between the U.S. government and Islamic extremists lends this novel authenticity and valuable insight into our actual geopolitical situation.
"The Faithful Spy" isn't a perfect pulse-pounding novel; it contains certain intervals where the action lags or the plot doesn't coalesce as convincingly as a seasoned reader of this genre might prefer. However, the relatively minor flaws of pacing and storytelling don't diminish the clawing feeling that this book of "fiction" could portend tomorrow's real headlines. God (by any Name) forbid.
This is a remarkable first novel, and I will not miss whatever Berenson decides to write next.
14 of 16 found the following review helpful:
Excellent thriller with a first rate plot twistJul 23, 2006
By B. McEwan
"yellokat"
This is one of the best suspense novels that I've read in a long time. First, it's very intelligent. There are no routine psycho serial killers, no pedestrian plot lines and no hackneyed cliches. This book features a well thought out plot that has a genuine kicker near the end, great characters that the reader actually cares about and atmospheric, literate prose.
The whole idea of the narrative -- that there is a CIA agent undercover inside Al Qadea -- is deeply interesting and absorbs the reader in the plot from the first page. It's the kind of book that is hard to put down, even though you know that you really should go to bed and be ready for work the next morning.
The author, Alex Berenson, is a reporter for the New York Times and this is his first work of fiction. I hope he writes many more.
24 of 30 found the following review helpful:
 A promising first novel, but disappointing as well.May 01, 2006
By Wolfgang Zernik
Spy novels at their best can approach great literature. I can give as examples the work of John LeCarre (at least in his younger years) and a personal favorite of mine Alan Furst. But stories like these, set in the Cold War or World War II, deal with an enemy that to some degree at least we understand. Anyone who tries to write a spy novel about the war we are in now, against Islamist extemists, has a much more difficult task since we (at least most of us) do not at all understand our enemy. That is why presumably so few writers have so far attempted to write serious fiction about the current war. Alex Berenson has at least tried. Although this first novel is not completely successful he should be given some credit for his attempt.
The book is in two parts. Part I (The Homecoming King) is just wonderful. The basic idea is original if not easily believable. A CIA agent manages to infiltrate Al Quaeda and then quite sincerely becomes a Muslim without however losing his basic patriotism and loyalty to America. The result is that his CIA bosses no longer trust him while his Al Quaeda bosses do not completely trust him either. He is a man in danger of being lost between two worlds. This part of the book is subtle and nuanced. Berenson describes the psychology of the Islamist fanatics in a way that is credible and deep. I found it not only enjoyable to read but came away with a better understanding of today's headlines. Part I is a real page-turner as other reviewers have noted.
Part II (The Believers) is in comparison very disappointing. Berenson seems to have dropped his literary aspirations and decided to go for the big money and the movie rights. This part of the book, while still well-written, is a standard thriller complete with plot cliches and the required happy ending. The bad guys plan to explode a dirty bomb in Times Square but are foiled just in time (yawn). They plan to spread the plague across the US but are again foiled just in time (yawn yawn). Finally the hero and his CIA supervisor/girlfriend are involved in climactic violence and both wounded but survive presumably to get married at last and live happily ever after (yawn yawn yawn). It is obvious that Berenson could have done much better than this but I imagine that as he got into the book he started to listen to bad advice from his editor and agent. Thus what could have been a literary breakthrough has become merely a probable commercial success and a movie. I give him five stars for part I but only one star for part II, so finally an average of three stars seems fair. In your next book Alex, I hope you will write at the level of excellence that you can obviously reach.
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