As The Midnight House begins, CIA agents capture two terrorists from Ansar Mohammad (The Warriors of Mohammad), one of whom is a key figure in the movement and has critical information to the United States. The other is a young innocent who was raped as a young boy of thirteen and then sent from his home in shame choosing to volunteer for a vest bomb over living a tortured life.

Ultimately, these two detainees are sent to Poland where the CIA has established an ultra-secret post-Guantanamo rendition facility to interrogate high-value prisoners. Called "the midnight house" because it is always midnight for the prisoners and because the team stays up late to interrogate them, there are ten members of ultra-secret Task Force 673 who are responsible for these prisoners. Information obtained is sent straight to the Pentagon.

First, Jack Fisher former 673 member now working personal security and then Mike Wyly also of 673 are found murdered, one in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Another member of the group goes missing in New Orleans. Finally, when six members of the group are dead or missing, the CIA director suspects Al Quaeda is involved and specifically Alaa Zumari.

John Wells is called back to Washington. Wells, hero of the Times Square bomb threat four years previously, is now living alone in a two room cabin in New Hampshire after nearly getting his fiancee killed in a prior assignment. Wells has been in the CIA for twenty years but can't quite bring himself to quit. He is sent to Cairo to find Zumari, a task which requires Wells to impersonate a Muslim who makes videos of detainees tortured by Americans.

The Midnight House is the fourth John Wells thriller. Wells is a complicated hero who converted to the Muslim faith while undercover for ten years. Berenson uses Wells and other characters in this novel to present both sides of the rendition issue, the importance of top-secret information to the safety of the United States and the brutality of torture and its effects not only on the prisoners but on those inflicting punishment on another human being.

While it would be better to read the novels in sequence, The Midnight House holds its own as an excellent stand alone spy thriller with a most unusual hero.

--Jerry Solot