The Ghost War
by Alex Berenson
Putnam, HK$200
'China's economy could propel it to be the world's most powerful country by the end of the century', a story in a financial newspaper predicted. 'Is America in Decline?' a headline on the cover of the magazine Foreign Affairs asked. Alex Berenson's second novel, The Ghost War, might be fiction, but it is against this possible shift in the balance of world power that the action takes place.
Former reporter Berenson is familiar with the complexities of international affairs, having covered everything from the global economy to the Iraq war for The New York Times and his eye for detail gives his plot a scary plausibility. Scary because he spells out just how vulnerable the world is when power falls into the wrong hands.
Seemingly unrelated events - a failed American mission in North Korea, an agreement to help Iran go nuclear, foreign help for the Taleban in Afghanistan and a political bid for power in Beijing - conspire to spark an international confrontation that leads the world to the brink of war. It falls to CIA agent John Wells to trace the links to try to save the day.
The last time we saw Wells, in Berenson's first novel, The Faithful Spy, he was alone in saving New York from a devastating terrorist attack, having alienated his CIA bosses after infiltrating al-Qaeda. At the beginning of The Ghost War he is suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder that leads him to risk his life unnecessarily at high speed on his motorcycle simply for the adrenalin rush.