Wells did not contact the CIA prior to September 11 to warn them about the planned attacks. (He was so isolated he didn’t know.) Believing he betrayed his country by failing to notify then, CIA operatives have lost confidence in him. Only Jennifer Exley is still convinced of his loyalty.

Wells is plucked out of a primitive camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to be sent to the United States for a mission. He is to head to Atlanta and await further instructions. Omar Khadri is the mastermind behind the plot that will involve Wells. His plan has more than one facet, but he is keeping all the details secret.

Wells delays contacting the CIA after arriving on American soil. He wants to reacquaint himself with the country and visit family in Montana. He finds that while he has been gone his ex-wife has remarried, his son doesn’t know him, and his mother has died. He feels completely isolated. When he does contact the CIA, he learns there are wide-spread doubts about his loyalty; only Exley is on his side. He is confined but escapes. Can he uncover and thwart Khadri’s plans before another al Qaeda attack on the United States?

Alex Berenson is a reporter for The New York Times; The Faithful Spy is his first novel. It is to be hoped that his day job provided him with insight and material for the story not available to authors of other thrillers. The book is not without some problems – the narrative does not always flow evenly and the multitude of characters can be confusing. John Wells and Jennifer Exley are well developed, but Exley, even though she is portrayed as a model of dedication and self-sacrifice in the service of her country, does not come across as convincingly female. John Wells, however, is a memorable character of such depth he carries the entire book.

Ivy League-educated, Wells’s reasons for joining the CIA and accepting an assignment that requires him to divorce himself from all vestiges of American life including family are skimmed over. By the time the reader meets Wells, he is thoroughly entrenched in al Qaeda and already completely cut off from his previous life. His isolation from everyone and everything else and his struggle to reconnect to the life he left behind make for a highly sympathetic and credible hero. Surely there must be people out there who are making similar sacrifices for their country. John Wells’s fictional experiences provide insight into what they are undergoing.

A quote on the book’s cover says in part: “It will keep you reading well into the night.” I’ve read similar words of praise before so I take them with a huge grain of salt, but with this one I can agree. From almost the first page, I was engrossed and couldn’t put it down and in fact stayed up late to finish it.

The Faithful Spy is not a book for the faint of heart. The GV-rating is a warning that this is a story that doesn’t flinch from the grittier aspects of the war on terror. But for those who revel in gripping thrillers with truly heroic characters, this one comes with a strong recommendation.

--Lesley Dunlap