The Faithful Spy: Spy Thriller (John Wells Book 1)

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The characters are very well drawn, and Wells problems, issues and characterization is much better drawn out than in the next two books. The various terrorists are also given more than a little attention. Somewhat like some other super agents of recent vintage Wells is a killing machine, but he has a soul and that a very well done espionage novel about John Wells, a CIA spy who infilitrates Al Quaida and comes in from the cold to attempt to stop a plot to destroy New York City with a dirty bomb.

Somewhat like some other super agents of recent vintage Wells is a killing machine, but he has a soul and that goes a long way in this novel. Read it in a day. I have no idea why GR recommended this book to me. I'm actually a bit upset. View all 3 comments. John Wells, deep undercover in Afghanistan-Pakistan border mountains, still sacrifices Arab fellows to American strangers. This review is tricky, where to plug spoiler alerts, because I was fairly positive, for many pages, that John had to die, Jen had to die, good guys were doomed.

How and how long can he survive? How can he fight alone? Your feet will pound the pavement, your heart will beat out of your chest, harder until you think you may collapse dead alongside the lone hero. Don't sit on the edge of your seat - you'll fall off. Jen is "basically logical, and yet somehow she had fallen for a man she had seen for all of two weeks in the last ten years.. A strong silent man to take her away" p The threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself" p Scientist Farouk Khan, hired by Pakistani nuclear program, leaves a geiger counter behind, so his belief "Americans had rules" p doesn't apply.

I'm not supposed to kill you. Not on purpose, anyway. But I am allowed to make you wish you were dead" p says Saul, lead interrogater at Diego Garcia base. Khadri doesn't trust fanatics or Tarik Dourant, abusive husband, "brilliant biochemist and commited to the cause" in Montreal "come to al Qaeda out of loneliness" p I thought Tarik would lock despised wife in with radioactive poison.

The Faithful Spy

A haystack made of needles" p Khadri nicknames attack 'Yellow' to John, for a target in downtown Manhattan. Cabs are yellow there. Jen traces smell of cigarette smoke to Arabs. Show me a clever gal who insists on tagging along, actually pulls trigger when John gives her gun. Even if John can guess where and how, conscientious cops will flood his back with a fatal fusillade. Khadri, still suspicious, keeps secret biologist Tarik was biologist from us too, until last moments.

John drinks soluble plague. One kiss infects Jen. In small room, eight terrorists wait enough hours to catch contagion, will pass out at city's busiest intersections while Khadri drives to Times Square. No one knew what the Yellow was. And they were all too late anyway" p By the s-e-c-o-n-d l--a--s--t page, odds improve to fifty-fifty. For what or whom are spoilers. Jen "in her haze" would trade "her leg so Wells would live. Who needed legs anyway. I don't like any visions - he effectively refuses to go onward.

I do like finale. Back burns " -- he opened his eyes. And there she was" p The latest installment of this series got a glowing review in The Economist so I was intrigued and decided to check out the first book. Being a fan of the international spy thriller genre which, in my opinion, was perfected by the likes of John Le Carre and Alan Furst , I was curious to see how Berenson would hold up. He seems to have the right kind of credentials - reporter for the New York Times with a stint in Baghdad, a contract from Random House, a movie deal.

The subject matter of terrori The latest installment of this series got a glowing review in The Economist so I was intrigued and decided to check out the first book. The subject matter of terrorism is relevant and timely more so in when this book was published. He does a pretty good job as a first-time author.

The basic premise is this: Wells speaks perfect Arabic and a smattering of other languages , has converted to Islam, and has painstakingly managed to gain the trust of al Queda's top brass, including the big dog Osama bin Laden himself. The book kicks off when Wells is assigned to return to the US on a top-secret mission from the terrorists. He briefly turns himself in to his CIA handlers before taking off again. From then on the book sometimes breaks new ground. There are detailed scenes of interrogation that are now familiar to people through films like "Zero Dark Thirty".

There are detailed descriptions of the desolation of villages in both Afghanistan and Iraq which hint at the poverty and desperation of the people living there. At other times, the book treads well-worn cliches and touches upon old tropes. There's the obligatory plot twist near the end. There's even the obligatory irrational bureaucrat who is seemingly more interested in playing politics than in saving lives.

When will these people understand?! Character development is pretty poor overall. Most bad guys blend into one and even the hero is strangely distant. We don't or at least I didn't feel much connection to him at all, despite lengthy passages talking about his mental angst and his motivations. The plot which most of the times is the driving force in books of this kind is decently well-paced and has only a couple of minor holes.

I can look past that without much difficulty.

All in all, this is a very solid first novel by someone new to the game. I will be checking out more books in the series as well. Dec 10, Tim rated it it was ok. I found this first in the series average at best and more depressing than I expected. Jun 04, Tom LA rated it really liked it. In fact, one of the best I've read in this type of "CIA action spy thriller" genre, in terms of characterization and plot.

Also, Edgar award winner. That's not an award for every Clive Cussler ghostwriter who happens to walk by. Something that stood out for me: He is a rather flawed man with a hyper-aggressiveness and a taste for violence that makes him much more believable. I guess that's how many of these special ops gu This was fun. I guess that's how many of these special ops guys are, after all.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Dean Robertson. He did a great job. Being the first one in a series, you have the added bonus of guaranteed genuine sweat and effort by the author, while with most series, the later books are the worst ones. I don't know about this particular series as this is the only one I've read so far.

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Apr 24, Kenny Bellew rated it really liked it. This is book 1 of 11 in the John Wells spy thriller series. It's pages, rated 3. This novel was nominated for the Barry and Edgar award for Best First novel, and I'd agree that it was a good opening for Alex Berenson. This book is about an American agent who is deeply embedded with Islamic extremists who want to destroy the USA.

There's a constant back and forth with John Wells trying to prove his loyalty to both sides, a love interest, and a ticking- This is book 1 of 11 in the John Wells spy thriller series. There's a constant back and forth with John Wells trying to prove his loyalty to both sides, a love interest, and a ticking-bomb type ending.

In the book, Wells converts to Islam and embraces the religion, but this never caused him to question his role in stopping the terrorists. However, it was one of the reasons he was not trusted by his handlers, so it was a useful story tool. Overall, I enjoyed this book.

It moved along well, even though is was a little heavy. It was a little depressing to realize that humans, who walk the earth as the same time as I do, really do want to do the horrible things that are in this book, and that bummed me out. Jul 11, Mr. Gottshalk rated it really liked it. This book is interesting, because the "spy" is different. John Wells has gone so far undercover to find information on terrorists in Afghanistan that he is actually forgotten by most of the CIA.

And then he reappears with some information that could help save the United States from another attack. I really like these kinds of books where good guys go "off the grid" - the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn and the Sam Fisher Splinter Cell series, I think, are both terrific. What I didn't like is th This book is interesting, because the "spy" is different. What I didn't like is that this book leaves the main character for periods of time to focus on the other characters, and their stories are a bit predictable.

I have only read two John Wells books this is the first one in the series , but I might fill in the gaps and read the next. He is the kind of character who, if healthy, could be very interesting in our war against terror, post September 11th. Not bad but if I hadn't gotten it for free I probably wouldn't have read it. The novel takes place in Afghanistan and the United States. John Wells is the only CIA agent managed to infiltrate al Qaeda, in the process he has become a faithful Muslim but still an American patriot.

Part 1 could have been a whole book all by itself. For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: Aug 31, James rated it liked it. This book really caught my eye when I found it on here. It takes a unique - as far as I know - viewpoint on the war on terror, with the protagonist being a deep cover CIA agent in Al Qaeda. During his time there he has come to see the west as decadent and has converted to Islam, but he still works against Al Qaeda.

So when he is sent home by Al Qaeda to do a mission, he is confronted by a decadent world, mistrusting employers and a plot to re-ignite the Jihad on America and its western allies. Y This book really caught my eye when I found it on here. Yeah, sounds like it should be really, really interesting read. But coming out of it all I got was a distinct sense of, 'meh'. I mean, I liked the subjects that were covered and the way that he did it, I just didn't connect with the book.

All the way through it was damnably obvious that this was a average book, no more, no less. Three Stars all the way. It had its good points. How did it feel? They lie to each other all the time, my characters. Sometimes they even lie to themselves. But they always tell me the truth. Why a spy thriller specifically?

I liked the tension and the speed. But for my first novel I wanted to write a tight book, a book that would keep readers in suspense until the last page, that would be gritty and real and build to a conclusion that feels surprising and inevitable at the same time. Also, and maybe this is cruel, I wanted to see how my heroes would react to extreme pressure.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Exley, his handler at the agency, has also given everything up for her job—her marriage, her children. The topic resonated for me. I live in New York.

I work about a hundred feet from Times Square. I think New Yorkers feel terrorism a little bit more viscerally than other Americans. Then of course I saw the other side of the coin firsthand as a reporter for the Times in Iraq, where the United States is intersecting with Islam every day, for better and worse. But I wanted to write a book that would comment on that effort. The terrorists in your book are all Muslim. Yes, terrorists come in all shapes and sizes.

But Muslim terrorists are by far the greatest threat to the United States, and Europe, too.

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Across the world, from Algeria to Indonesia, hundreds of millions of Muslims are struggling for survival. In Europe, millions of young Muslim men are alienated and unemployed. Fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden offer them an answer: Blame the United States. Go to war to reclaim the glory of Islam.

Americans are killing Iraqi civilians. Give the infidels a taste of their own medicine. His methods and his goals are repugnant. Even in war, deliberately targeting civilians is criminal. And I suspect that very few Americans would want to live under a Muslim theocracy. He and his men want to destroy the United States as much as we want to destroy them.

They are risking their lives for their cause. So writing about this conflict is very different than writing about the Cold War.

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In the Cold War, the two sides were recognizable to each other. They played by the same rules: Neither side wanted a nuclear holocaust. The game was a chess match, complex and difficult but controlled. After completing this task, and secretly killing his two fellow Al Qaeda members, he is given the task of collecting something from Canada. While in Canada, he meets with an Al-Qaeda member to collect a suitcase, really a scientist who has been working to grow the plague bacteria. Wells returns with the suitcase but has secretly been infected with the plague by the scientist.

Wells then learns that Al Qaeda used the LA bombings as a distraction from an impending, much larger attack; several other Al Qaeda members have infected themselves with the plague and plan to spread it throughout the population, creating a pandemic within the United States. Wells, with the help of Exley, is able to kill the infected terrorists and take out their leader, Khadri, thwarting their plans. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.

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