Morning Spy, Evening Spy

August 7, 2006
Mixing fact and faction effectively, MacKinnon chronicles the poignant personal story of a senior CIA agent, Paul Patterson, in the months before 9/11. Patterson has been investigating the assassination of an agency operative in Pakistan who had been on the trail of Osama bin Laden before the terrorist became a household name. The case leads Patterson to a disturbing chain of events—porous U.S. immigration policies, White House indifference, CIA bungling—that in hindsight provides the perfect set of circumstances for 9/11. At the same time, Patterson juggles a painful divorce after the accidental death of a teenage son. With this second novel (after 1985's Finding Hoseyn
), MacKinnon, a Middle East expert whose specialty is Iran, shows great insight into the inner workings of U.S. intelligence. His clipped prose style, descriptive discipline and tone-perfect dialogue elevate this thriller above the pack, though the central plot, stopping just short of 9/11, ends with more of a whimper than a bang.

September 1, 2006
Beginning at the end of 2000 and ending the night of September 10, 2001, this CIA procedural paints a haunting, disturbingly realistic portrait of the failings, organizational and personal, that opened up the skies for 9/11. Agency troubleshooter Paul Patterson spends most of the year investigating the murder of a shady CIA contractor in Pakistan. He knew the guy, slept with his assistant, and even trained a turncoat militant who might have had a hand in the assassination. So the job is intensely personal for Patterson, and he throws himself into it even as his home life falls apart. Along the way, he senses the fringes of a big al-Qaeda plot. But with the intelligence agencies fiercely protecting their "family jewels"--the very information that, if pooled, might have foiled the operation--the pieces stay snug in their silos. As the investigation unfolds, MacKinnon inserts brief sections marking various milestones in the al-Qaeda operation, adding to a rising sense of sorrowful frustration that pays off in a gut punch of an ending hours before the hijackers take their seats.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)