I will start out by admitting I haven’t read anything else by Alex Berenson. To start with his second novel, a novel largely preoccupied with what happened in the first novel, may not be the best way to start reading him, but I had the book and it wasn’t going to read itself. I will say that this review will contain spoilers, but this book is 6 years old at this point, and I’m pretty sure there are like 5 sequels so I really shouldn’t have to.
The plot revolves around John Wells, the only undercover CIA agent ever to embed himself with Al Qaeda the account of which makes up the basic plot of the first book. In The Ghost War John Wells is back, haunted by the events of the first book, untrusted by the higher-ups at the Agency, but untouchable because of his heroic effort to stop a major terrorist attack. His direct superior, who is also his girlfriend (though maybe I should reverse those two descriptions because one is more important than the other. I’ll give you a hint which one – its not supervisor), while giving him the space he needs to recover from his PTSD (PTSD stands for Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder which the author helpfully points out because he can’t leave an acronym to the imagination) discovers that someone is helping train the Taliban in Afganistan. Meanwhile an extraction in North Korea goes terribly wrong, and also meanwhile China and Iran are working together for some reason that no one can figure out! Could any of these seemingly completely unrelated events somehow actually be related? Well if you haven’t basically figured out the entire connection by the halfway point of the book, then maybe you will enjoy the book more than I did.
The New York Times book review praises The Ghost War for its intricate depiction of world politics simplified down to a smart fast-paced read. I agree with the Times review in so much as the book is face-paced and economically written. The descriptions and scheming evoke a journalistic style that is well suited to large scale geopolitics. Berenson obviously knows his stuff and writes convincingly about both the large scale political plotting and the small scale human decisions that lead to larger consequences. He writes about all the minor characters with generosity, the Chinese day-laborer who ends up starting a riot is written sympathetically and is one of the best passages of the book, though it takes up less than a chapter. The American soldiers of The Ghost War are fighting the good fight, arm in arm with their companions, while the higher-ups don’t know what they are doing.
But ultimately this is a book devoted to a very particular spy trying to stop all of this and that is where the book fails.
None of the characters trying to stop the outbreak of war is well characterized or even really likable. Each can be distilled to one or two attributes that are used to differentiate them. One of the blurbs on The Ghost War compares the book to John le Carré and thematically there may be some slight overlap, but in terms of characters and shear likability the two authors are not in the same ballpark.
John Wells is a 1-dimentional stereotype. His defining features are that he likes to ride motorcycles fast, can speak fluent Arabic, and refuses to seek help for his mental health issues. Every single one of his attributes are a cliche of the uber-masculine, macho loner. If he can’t do it alone then it didn’t need to get done. I mean I could even see, because of what I can gather how the first book ended, he could be distrustfully of the CIA authority, have trouble asking for help, and want to do things his own way and those would be interesting aspects of his personality to explore. But none of these issues are addressed in the book. He lets the CIA arrange for him to go to Afghanistan and embed him with the SF (that’s special forces says the author) to go on a special mission, but other than being distrustful of being followed by CIA helicopters at the beginning of the book (a plot line that looked like it was going to lead to conflict with the CIA head office but then didn’t because it was his girlfriend who order it and I guess that’s just fine) he shows no signs of distrust.
In Afghanistan he is supposed to be working as part of a team, but instead he goes off alone into a cave looking for terrorists. That he kills one and captures the other one I think is supposed to be heroic, but it doesn’t end up feeling that way because what did he learn about himself? That he can do anything by himself with no consequences. It would be an okay lesson if later in the book that turned out to be false. And you know where that would have been good, when he abuses his authority to break into a weapons-dealer’s house. If this scene had him caught or hurt or just simply been a failure because he hadn’t been able to ask for help, then there could have been some character growth. But what does he do instead? He asks his girlfriend to help him break the law in order to participate in some extra-legal torturing while just chapters before he was lamenting the tarnished image of American because of the way we’ve treated detainees in the past. Conveniently act out of character to move the plot along.
The torture works (somehow) and he rides off, as far as I know never to think of it again, not remorsefully because of his actions. This happens all the time in the novel. He mercy kills some guy and notes that he will be having nightmares about this for a long time, and never again do we hear about nightmares at least not until all of the action has passed. He thinks he might have PTSD but won’t get help and (other than sleeplessness that doesn’t seem to affect any of his actions) never seems to show any symptoms of. He contemplates how he loves his girlfriend, but maybe leaving her would be for the best because of the things he sure he’s done to hurt her, and she thinks about the those things as well, but we really never see these things. Unless its how as soon as she starts asking questions that might lead to an emotional break though he stops her talking by having sex with her.
The girlfriend/supervisor, Jennifer Exley, is again a very flat character. We see her inner monologue but it never seems to revolve around anything other than her work and her boyfriend. We are told she has kids but I don’t think I would ever know this. When she thinks about John its not how she can get him to get help, its not whether she should leave him because he won’t get help, its what she can do to distract him from his problems. Its how much she loves him and how she can do more for him. Its completely self-less in a way that no real rounded human being ever is. I don’t mean selfless in that she does for other, but “self-less” in that she doesn’t do for herself. Which if it were just a character flaw and it ultimately led to growth I could even forgive, but it doesn’t. Everything works out fine at the end.
If this book were a series of distinct episodes shown from multiple different peoples’ perspectives that coalesced into a coherent narrative that might be a book worth cherishing. As it is this book takes the idea of multiple perspectives, makes one guy the driving force to connect them and in turn the book moves mechanically forward with no real surprises or really any suspense. I give it a B-.
Laughlin's Line 