The Faithful Spy

By: Alex Berenson

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

“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 listeners 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.

©2006 Alex Berenson (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

“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)

“Berenson offers a very American story - a sort of terrorist High Noon...exciting.” (The New York Times)

“A hold-your-breath thriller...a grabber.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Great Spy Character, Great Story

I was thrilled with this purchase. It is a uniquely thorough look at a veteran spy, the toll his work takes on him, and how his past allows him to react to the present. And he is no super hero either. Most of all it a terrific suspense novel.

I suppose it's unfair to be dissappointed

When I want to lose myself in a thriller, I'm hoping to be swept up in a sophisticated plot, believable dialogue, and complex characters in a well described, interesting setting. I'm thinking of the works of Le Carre, Alan Furst, Cruz Smith. I made it through "The Faithful Spy", in the same way you can make it through a mediocre meal. A bit of a slog, but you paid for it, it probably won't hurt you, and it seems somehow impolite not to clean your plate..

Berenson has won an Edgar award and so I expected better. While this book isn't driven by sex scenes or much pointless gore, it just doesn't have much in it that was very interesting to me. The descriptions of the methods and plots of the terrorists were adequately captivating and terrifying, by far the most interesting aspects of the book, but the rest of the story was a trudge.

I found the characters to be shallow and unengaging, the plot mundane and predictable. Berenson's powers of description rate a C at best. I'm still chuckling at the image of the hero lying critically ill and wounded while his boss is "hopping around the hospital room on his skinny legs"; and wondering what sort of noise the heroine made that was "between a grunt and a sigh". The stereotypical stoic hero, bad boss, love at first sight, and evil terrorists are all included and nothing about any of them is intriguing, and so none of them are very memorable. I'll be surprised if I have any recollection of this book in six weeks and I certainly won't be looking for "more like this".

The narration is within the realm of what seems to be considered competent, but no better than that. For me, this was a mediocre listen. It is, at best, a pretty standard thriller. Looking back at the promotion and other comments I think I should have been able to surmise that.

The Faithful Spy

Great book, it kept me glued to the end!

Really enjoyed this, recommended

Timely, plenty of action, plausible at times, sometimes not, sometimes the implausible is so on the money it is hard to discount. Has some of the nuances, plot depth and character development of the old Smiley stuff...kind of a modern blend of Le Carr?? and Alister McClean. Avoids the techno-babble and thin characters of most current spy/adventurers. Great fun.

good not great

This is a good book, not great, and only at the end was it hard to "put down". Tragically, after 9/11, there is a lot of truth in the book, as far as sleeper cells and people wanting to hurt america. I would recommend Silva, Steve Berry, Brad Thor over this book

realistic, patriotic glimpse of our brave

it was a story that provides an insight into what some of our brave military have endured to collect information and keep us safe. felt like I was educated and entertained at the same time.

A really good book

This book falls in the same category as a Brad Thor, Lee Child, and John Sandford. Not that they are a run of the mill type book (they kind of are), but that they have so many out there for me to catch up on that its pretty daunting to do so. There are so many other series out there that have 3 or 4 to the series and that is it. How many times can one guy be the hero though?

I was wrong.

I thought I would dislike it but I didn't. It really pulled me into the story and the reading of it was well done.

G00d for the genre.

First time reader, I thought the main character was more believable than Mitch Rapp, and less unhuman. Good performance, nice plot, I have purchased the rest of the books in the series.

The Faithful Spy by A lex Berenson

MOST TIMELY - MOST
ABSORBING -!Mr. Berenson captures the
very ESSENCE of the CLIMATE of TODAY'S
VICISSITUDES OF TIME AND CAPRICES OF
MEN. HIGH PRAISE. Joyce N. Eichenberg