The Silent Man

December 15, 2008
Bestseller Berenson's well-plotted and thoughtful third thriller to feature CIA agent John Wells (after The Ghost War
) finds Wells and his fellow CIA agent and fiancée, Jenny Exley, living happily together in Washington, D.C., content to devote themselves to fighting the forces of evil. One morning, while stuck in traffic on their way to CIA headquarters, men on motorcycles attack them in their minivan. Exley suffers a serious gunshot injury in an act of revenge by minions of Pierre Kowalski, an enemy from an earlier book. Meanwhile, jihadists bent on destroying America steal two small atomic bombs. These extremely clever villains, per Berenson's style, aren't mad dog idiots but credible characters with reasons, at least from their own perspective, to be doing the great evil they're planning. Fast and furious when it needs to be, this is a welcome addition to an excellent series. Berenson won an Edgar for his first novel, The Faithful Spy
.

January 15, 2009
CIA superagent John Wells (The Ghost War, 2008, etc.) returns in another well-crafted thriller.

When his people botch a hit on Wells, ruthless international weapons dealer Pierre Kowalski knows he needs to think fast of something valuable to trade for his skin. Wells isn 't one to let something like this slide, especially since his fiance Jennifer Exley was caught in the crossfire. In exchange for a truce, Kowalski decides to let Wells in on a rumor that 's been making the rounds lately, something about an unspecified quantity of highly enriched uranium that the Russians seem to have lost. Wells, who already has had some considerable success when it comes to saving the country from grave national threats, takes the bait. Soon he and the rest of the federal government are scrambling to find out who has the uranium, how much they have and what they 're planning on doing with it. You could arch your eyebrows at the hero 's God-like hand-to-hand combat abilities, or the circumstances that conspire to place the same agent between the United States and total ruin more than once in the span of a few short years. It might be considered overkill that Wells is lustily ogled by every female in the book, from the supermodel to the tanning-booth attendant. And low groans are definitely in order for the tenuous clue that leads him to the book 's climactic conclusion. But please groan quietly, so as not to spoil everyone 's fun. Berenson earns his reader 's suspension of disbelief with a relentless plot and many expertly wrought white-knuckle thrills along the way.

Action-packed, thrilling and just credible enough.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 2, 2009
Verdict: Berenson's third John Wells espionage novel (after The Faithful Spy and The Ghost War) is a swift and gripping read reminiscent of David Stone's thrillers but without the graphic violence. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/08.] Background: After a terrorist attack in Washington, DC, leaves several people dead and Wells's fiancee severely wounded, the CIA agent travels to Russia on a private mission that morphs from destroying his nemesis into saving the world. Readers familiar with the characters from the series will especially enjoy the complex-if occasionally fanciful-plot involving stolen Russian weapons, international arms transactions, and a terrorist scheme to construct and detonate a nuclear bomb in the United States.-Jonathan Pearce, California State Univ. Stanislaus, Stockton, CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2009
John Wells saves the world for the third time in as many books, but we wouldnt have it any other way. Islamist jihadists manage to steal some fissionable material out of a remote Russian weapons depot, intending to build a crude atom bomb to unleash on the great Satan. Meanwhile, Wells love interest is nearly killed by an old enemy, sending our dour, driven hero eastward on a one-man mission of vengeance, even as the terrorists head steadily westward with their awful freight. Wells has lost some of his promise as a devout Muslim action hero (The Faithful Spy, 2006), an intriguing premise completely jettisoned here. But while Wells has grown two-dimensional, the supporting cast of holy warriors and their reluctant assistants (such as Gregor, a pathetically hulking weak link on the weapons depots payroll) are fleshed out and motivated far more than your typical baddies. Oddly enough, it is the terrorists desperate nuclear caper, plausibly detailed and convincingly problematic, that keeps the reader caring, and guessing, until the end and that keeps this series in the first rank of international thrillers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)