Blow the House Down

Paul Michael blows the house down with a crisp, fast-paced reading of this thriller, which is a part-fact, part-fiction prequel to the events of 9/11. CIA operative Max Waller, who has obsessed for years over the murder of an American agent in Lebanon, uncovers a plot that involves bin Laden, Hezbollah, as well as several other radical factions from the Middle East. One of the subplots involves the attempted destruction of airliners with explosives disguised as harmless liquids. As Waller uncovers layer after layer of duplicity, Michael appropriately ratchets up the tension. His classy, melodic voice does justice to most of the characters, and his French pronunciations are near perfect. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

March 13, 2006
Former CIA agent Baer, author of the memoir See No Evil
(2002), which inspired the film Syriana
, offers the same closely observed details of intelligence work and life in his first novel, a political thriller. Unfortunately, a surfeit of subplots and dozens of characters slow the action down. One day in June 2001, veteran CIA case officer Max Waller is crudely and coldly removed from his office and job in Langley, Va. On September 11, 2001, what Waller has discovered sifting through live secrets and dead agents from Washington to Tehran comes together into a plausible alternate theory of how and why the Twin Towers were targeted. Whether or not readers buy into that theory, they're sure to enjoy Baer's jaundiced view of his former employer. When Waller finds himself being trailed by some obvious outsiders, he thinks, "The FBI was capable of screwing up... but neither it nor the local police nor anyone else I could think of in this nation or abroad would be idiotic enough to field a white surveillance team in Harlem. For that, you needed incompetence on a colossal scale. Langley had to be behind it." Author tour.

John Rubinstein is in his element performing Robert Baer's spy novel. The story of evil inside the very spy agencies charged with protecting our safety is compelling, and Rubinstein's no-nonsense delivery adds to the tension. Rubinstein captures the mood and accents of a dozen characters without making any sound like caricature. He makes it simple to follow the complex story of spies, counterspies, and plots within plots, which begin in the Middle East and may lead to 9/11. It's interesting to note that Baer is a former CIA operative who spent 20 years fighting Middle East terrorist groups. He knows what he's talking about. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine