The Coldest Warrior

Starred review from November 18, 2019
Based on the real-life case of biological warfare scientist Frank Olson, Vidich’s lean, crisp third CIA novel (after 2017’s The Good Assassin) recreates, then reimagines, the circumstances of Olson’s still-unexplained death. In 1975, 22 years after scientific researcher Charles Wilson plunged to his death from the ninth floor of a Washington, D.C., hotel, agency inspector Jack Gabriel is assigned to re-open the case to determine whether it was a suicide, an accident, or something more sinister. Gabriel runs into resistance from the start. He knows that Wilson was secretly drugged by the CIA as part of the agency’s LSD experiments of the time, but had always figured Wilson leapt to his death or accidentally fell. Agents who were involved in the original case, most of whom have risen to positions of power at the CIA, not only won’t talk but actively warn him off the case. After a few of them die under suspicious circumstances, Gabriel starts to wonder: did the agency kill one of its own? Vidich, a former media industry executive with no spycraft background, writes with the nuanced detail and authority of a career spook. With this outing, Vidich enters the upper ranks of espionage thriller writers. Agent: Will Roberts, Gernert Company.

January 15, 2020
A CIA coverup slowly unravels. In 1953, Dr. Charles Wilson either jumped or fell from a window of the Hotel Harrington. In 1975, at a Senate hearing, it was publicly revealed that he had been subjected to a CIA experiment involving LSD, but the fact that he had been a CIA employee and the details of his work for the agency went undiscovered. Internal records of the death were missing, and the director, himself unaware of the actual circumstances of Wilson's death, asks Jack Gabriel to investigate and report the real story if he can. Gabriel knew Wilson and that he worked in the germ warfare laboratories, and from that starting point he begins to explore the questions surrounding Wilson's death. As he works, potential witnesses die "accidentally," avenues of inquiry dry up, and a substantial coverup becomes apparent. Then an anonymous source offers a few tips, and Gabriel begins to understand the true extent of the CIA's crime: They murdered one of their own. There remain questions, though, and in the process of trying to assess who and why, Gabriel's own life becomes perilous. Overall, the novel's pace is a little slow and the plot one-dimensional, but the characters of Gabriel and his family and of Wilson's surviving family are vivid and sympathetic. Vidich (The Good Assassin, 2017, etc.) acknowledges that his novel is based on the story of Frank Olson, who "fell or jumped" from a New York City hotel room in November 1953, and fidelity to historical fact may account for the pace and plotting. But this fidelity also reveals a shameful instance of postwar conduct and the arrogance of the powerful. A worthwhile thriller and a valuable exposé.

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Starred review from February 1, 2020

On November 27, 1953, bioweapons scientist Dr. Charles Wilson jumps--or is pushed--to his death from the ninth floor of a Washington, DC, hotel. Twenty-two years later, after the release of the Rockefeller Report detailing illegal activities performed by the CIA during that time, agent Jack Gabriel is asked to investigate the mysterious death. The investigation is Jack's last mission before he retires from the CIA, and it soon pushes him into the crosshairs of his employer, the FBI, and the office of the president, all of whom are eager to hide that Wilson was part of a top-secret germ warfare experiment carried out on civilians during the Korean War. Jack becomes a target as he looks into Wilson's death and soon discovers that the victim was given LSD before he died. But this truth only leads to more secrets that men in the government would kill to keep. VERDICT Nonfiction and fiction author Vidich (An Honorable Man) presents a fast-paced, historically accurate thriller, placing him alongside other great spy authors such as John le Carré and Alan Furst. Readers of the genre will want this slow-burn chiller that shows how far government will go to keep secrets.--Bill Anderson, Scott Cty. P.L., Scottsburg, IN

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2019
Like Max Allan Collins in Better Dead (2016), Vidich draws on the real-life story of CIA scientist Frank Olson, who "jumped or fell," according to the official story, from a hotel-room window in 1953. Vidich has a personal connection to the case: his aunt was Olson's widow. Here it's 1976, and the fate of Charles Wilson (Olson) has become news again, prompted by an investigation of CIA misdeeds that has unveiled information suggesting that Wilson's death may have been connected to CIA experiments with LSD. Agency lifer Jack Gabriel, a friend of Wilson's family, is assigned by the director to find out what really happened in 1953. But, in fact, neither the director nor his inner circle wants Gabriel digging all that deeply; when he does, he becomes the hunted rather than the hunter. Vidich generates plenty of tension as Gabriel attempts to sort out who is after him and then constructs an elaborate plan to carve out a separate peace. In the manner of Charles Cumming and recent le Carr�, Vidich pits spies on the same side against one another in a kind of internal cold war.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)