Blow the House Down

By: Robert Baer

Narrated by: Paul Michael

Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Former CIA operative Robert Baer pushes fiction to the absolute limit in this riveting and unnervingly plausible alternative history of 9/11.

Veteran CIA officer Max Waller has long been obsessed with the abduction and murder of his Agency mentor. Though years of digging yield the name of a suspect, an Iranian math genius turned terrorist, the trail seems too cold to justify further effort. Then Max turns up a photograph of the man standing alongside Osama bin Laden and a mysterious westerner whose face has been cut out, feeding Max's suspicion. When the first official to whom Max shows the photo winds up dead, the out-of-favor agent suddenly finds himself the target of dark forces within the intelligence community who are desperate to muzzle him.

Eluding a global surveillance net, Max, in the summer of 2001, begins tracking the spore of a complex conspiracy, meeting clandestinely with suicide bombers and Arab royalty and ultimately realizing the Iranian he'd sought for a decades-old crime is actually at the nexus of a terrifying plot.

Showing off dazzling tradecraft and an array of richly textured backdrops, and filled with real names and events, Blow the House Down deftly balances fact and possibility to become the first great thriller to spring from the war on terrorism.

©2006 Robert Baer (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Former CIA agent Baer, author of the memoir See No Evil, which inspired the film Syriana, offers the same closely observed details of intelligence work and life in his first novel." (Publishers Weekly)
"Extremely well crafted....The author...fills the book with the kind of detail that will make readers feel as though they have completed a crash course in international intelligence." (Booklis)

Story is great…the narration is meh

I found this story to be really well written and exciting. The narrator however sounds like he should be doing voiceovers for a car insurance commercial that’s trying to be funny.

What if...

What if what happened on 9/11 could have been avoided? What if so called "leaders of industry" had the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands? What if members of the government who are suppose to serve and protect us were serving themselves? I'm glad I didn't read any reviews before I listened to this book. I look at what our government is doing now in response to what happened on 9/11 and I'm so confused. Why haven't the ones who so mercilessly killed our sisters and brothers not been brought to justice? This is a bad joke or dream or both. Mr Baer tries to open our eyes to the inconsistencies of US policy and action abroad. I found his book supremely entertaining and Paul Michael is a very good narrator.

another great book

this book leaves many questions unanswered regarding 9/11 and Iran and why the US government hasn't done what theyre supposed to

Great Book

Any additional comments?

Written by a former spy, Robert Baer brings to life the "life of a spy" and the intense moments as well as the skills need for a spy to do his job!

So Boring

I have read other books by Baer and thought this one would be fascinating.

It was a completely boring dud.

Just kept waiting to become interested in any scenario or character, but it never happened.

Don't bother with this one.

(The narrator was very good, though! Just had, should I write it again? BORING material.)

Interesting, but . . .

I have read Baer's account of his service in the CIA and admire his accomplishments, but this would have been much better as a straightforward presentation of his observations and theories than as a novel. It lacks the strength of plot and atmosphere of the work of Furst and Le Carre's earlier works.