C’mon, John Wells.
You are better than the antics you pull in Alex Berenson’s “The Deceivers,” the 11th book in a series that features the rawhide-tough but thoughtful intelligence agent John Wells.
Wells worked for several years as an undercover CIA operative in the Middle East, immersing himself into the culture of the Muslim world and even converting to Islam. But he kept his nationalistic priorities straight and protected America from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Lately, he’s been working more as a fix-it man for his old CIA boss Vinny Duto, now the president of the United States. And he gets the usual help from CIA warhorse analyst and wonderfully cynical Ellis Shafer.
The problem in this go-around is that Wells is frighteningly bent on finding and stopping a former Army sniper who has been seduced and compromised by a beautiful Russian spy. At the end of the book, he throws all common sense to the wind and tries to take down the sniper all by himself without help from the FBI, thus risking the life of a presidential candidate and an all-out war with the Muslim world.
Wells is now in his 40s, and maybe it’s time he retired to his mountain retreat in New England with his wife and children. All that domestic bliss could be screwing with his judgment.
Otherwise, the book is typically fast-paced and a little complicated without making you wish you kept notes to keep track of the characters and plot. Berenson, a former business reporter at The Denver Post, also draws on his experiences as a New York Times reporter to offer his own insights into the Russian mind.
My favorite: “Russians had learned sometime between Genghis Khan and Napoleon that survival was its own moral imperative.”
