The Deceivers

December 1, 2017
The latest in the long-running John Wells series (The Prisoner, 2017, etc.), in which the hero has faced high-stakes crises annually since 2006.Small-time drug dealer Ahmed Shakir is tricked into participating in a terrorist attack at a basketball game in Dallas and then is blown up along with hundreds of others by 400 pounds of C4 explosive. President Vinny Duto summons ex-CIA agent John Wells to travel to Bogota, Colombia, to investigate a lead on the attack. "Were other attacks in the works?"Of course there were. Meanwhile, Sen. Paul Birman, a likely challenger to Duto in the next election, is on the warpath about Muslims after the Dallas attack. Birman has a cousin, Eric, who hates "Lucky Cousin Paul" and is both a decorated war veteran and a spy for the Russians. Then there's Tom Miller, who'd been an Army sniper and whose only talent is long-range sharpshooting. He wallows in conspiracy theories that say things like George W. Bush arranged the 9/11 attacks. A homely, lonely virgin, Miller is the "perfect mark" for Allie, a sexy Russian agent who sets him up to be a killer. So he shoots a Missouri megachurch pastor and a Roman Catholic cardinal "because he couldn't say no to his girlfriend." The next target could be Sen. Birman or the president himself, so Wells and colleagues face a dangerous challenge in stopping the threat. Fans of the series know that Wells is a convert to Islam, which feels less relevant here than in some of his earlier adventures. Also, he sees himself "as a knight-errant, a modern Don Quixote," though he's far more successful than the ancient Spaniard. As often happens, the villains are the most interesting characters--the resentful Eric, the hapless Tom, the conniving Allie.Another enjoyable entry in a series that's likely to go on for a while.

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December 18, 2017
Russia’s attempts to influence U.S. politics reach new extremes in Edgar-winner Berenson’s timely 12th novel featuring wily CIA operative John Wells (after 2017’s The Prisoner). When a massive explosion in Dallas, Tex., kills 398 people, U.S. president Vinny Duto asks Wells to investigate. The Islamic State has claimed credit, but this outrage has aspects that suggest a larger plot. Later, two high-profile evangelical ministers in the Midwest are gunned down by a former U.S. Army sniper, who appears to have been under the spell of a beautiful vixen with ties to Moscow. Wells eventually roots out evidence that Moscow is orchestrating these acts of terror in an attempt to stir nationalist feelings among American voters and encourage the rise of Paul Birman, a right-wing Tennessee senator who’s running for president. After a long initial detour to South America, the plot picks up speed and moves swiftly toward a satisfying finale. As usual, Berenson’s knowledge of geopolitical issues and government intelligence strategies impresses. Author tour. Agent: Bob Barnett, Williams & Connolly.

Starred review from November 15, 2017
After being arrested by an apparent FBI agent, small-time Dallas coke dealer Ahmed Shakir agrees to help the agency entrap his cousins, Muslim radicals, in a terrorist sting. The plan is to appear to attack fans at a Dallas Mavericks basketball game, but with the firing pins removed from their guns, the shooters would fall quickly into the hands of the waiting agents. But the pins aren't removed, and the cousins, along with Ahmed, are killed in the resulting carnage, which claims nearly 400 innocent lives. President Vinnie Duto, former CIA head and frenemy to maverick agent John Wells, wants answers now and sends Wells to Colombia to meet with an agency asset who claims to know the real story about the attack. So begins the first installment of a new multivolume story arc that finds Wells and his longtime supporter, aging CIA analyst Ellis Shafer, sniffing out a many-tentacled conspiracy that reads like today's headlines on steroids: Russian tampering kicked to a new level; a dim-witted, to-the-manor-born presidential aspirant with a baffling appeal to blue-collar voters; and a double agent out of The Manchurian Candidate.Summarizing Berenson's plots tends to give them a comic-book feel, but, on the page, they read very differently, combining former reporter Berenson's always-shrewd grasp of international politics with his equally impressive ability to construct involved stories whose convolutions never interrupt the full-throttle narrative drive. And Wells, of course, is the cynical but committed hero we all wish was out there every day saving the real world. Another wonderful suspense novel that leaves readers shuddering with the realization that this isn't nearly as unbelievable as it should be.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The weirder the world gets, the more Berenson's audience grows.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2017

A terrorist sting gone intentionally wrong results in puddles of blood, but John Wells is not asked to investigate but to contact an old asset who has information to share: the Russians are planning to take over the U.S. government.

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