About:
The Silent Man by Alex Berenson is the third novel following CIA agent John Wells. Mr. Berenson is a best selling author and New York Times reporter.
- 432 pages
- Publisher : Arrow
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 9780099545590
My rating for The Silent Man – 4
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Thoughts:
I enjoyed every book by Mr. Berenson I’ve read, including the first John Wells novel, The Faithful Spy. His writing is both journalistic in voice, and exciting moving the narrative forward quickly and efficiently.
John Wells makes mistakes, undercuts his own agency and personal life, and screws up all the time. This makes his success felt even more surprising somehow, and that he certainly earned it.
Like his previous books, The Silent Man by Alex Berenson starts as a character study and ends up with a fast narrative that barley lets up until the end. The antagonists are believable and don’t fall into a mold. They are driven by twisted, but believable logic and their grievances are pulled out of the real world.
I found the “super spy” trope out of place in a book which is grounded in reality and the secondary characters, especially Exley, are their simply to drive Wells to do dumb things. One of the more interesting aspects of the previous books was Well’s conversion to Islam, which is barley mentioned in this book.
Once again though, Mr. Berenson wrote a top-notch espionage thriller which is difficult to put down. It’s realistic, complex, raw, and darker than the previous books.
Synopsis:
CIA Agent John Wells is trying to get back to some sort of normalcy with his fiancée and fellow agent, Jennifer Exley. When an assassination attempt fails, Wells goes after Pierre Kowalski, the arms dealer who ordered the attack which wounded Exley.
While on his revenge mission, Wells discovers that a Russian facility is hiding a recent theft of nuclear material. This larger threat to the US, must put Well’s revenge mission on the backburner before a nuclear device is detonated in the US.
Buy The Silent Man from Amazon.com*
More books from the John Wells series*
More books by Alex Berenson
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer: I bought this book
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