Blow the House Down: A Novel [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio CD]

 

 

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[...]
But the book is great for 3 reasons:

1) The trade craft and training Baer writes about. It is almost a "how to" book, which makes the book very interesting. How Max, the hero, knows he is being tailed and his going off the grid is wild.

2) The fiction, or most of it, is Baer's theory about 9/11 and Bin Laden and why the Iran is treated with "kid gloves" by the USA. It is the kind of thought that a case officer in the CIA does when connecting the dots. Some may call him paranoid and say that connecting the dots is best left to CIA analysts and not agents in the field. But much of it is very sound. This was to be a non-fiction book, until the CIA stopped him.

3) He draws very interesting characters. This surprised me, a lot. It was much than I was counting on.

Some have called Baer a liberal. I do not think this is right. It is clear he has no respect for "neo-cons", but he tried to overthrow Saddam until he was booted from the CIA because BOTH CLINTON and NEO-CON hero Chalabi lied about Baer. He was deeply critical of Clinton too. His take is "old school", we overthrow our enemies, but we do not spread Democracy. Also, it is clear that while he thinks of Israel as a friend, he thinks our policy should not be an echo of theirs.

With his third novel (See No Evil and Sleeping With The Devil) bestselling author Robert Baer creates an intriguing and chilling alternate scenario of what took place prior to the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Once a CIA operative Baer knows that there's often barely breathing room between fact and fiction, and due to his experience with operations in the East he's well familiar with the territory he stakes out in Blow The House Down, which merely serves to make his tale all the more compellingly real as we are introduced to veteran CIA operative Max Waller who won't rest easy until he finds the real truth concerning the kidnaping and murder of Bill Buckley, the CIA's Beirut chief of station in the 1980s.

However, as Waller begins to dig into the facts surrounding Buckley's death he finds himself brought to an abrupt halt by an investigation that is obviously a ploy to keep him from learning more. Waller has already discovered a telling photo showing a Western man standing with Osama bin Laden and an Iranian terrorist. The bottleneck he encountered and the mysterious photograph only serve to whet Waller's determination to discover the truth. But, as he searches in the darkest corners of the world and even in Washington he has cause to wonder whether there is any truth at all.

More than a suspenseful, fast-paced read, Blow The House Down raises many questions, disturbing ones, as Baer posits in a Q & A: "How did the 9/11 suicide bombers get across Iran? And no one's ever answered the question why the two San Diego suicide bombers were never followed up on. Why no one was fired. Why Jarrah's questioning in Dubai was never passed on to the FBI. We have not answered those questions because they're inconvenient or make us uncomfortable."

An unsettling scenario? Yes. Politically relevant? You bet. Read and decide for yourself. Whatever your conclusions, Baer has crafted another blockbuster of a book.

I have read and really liked both Robert Baer's autobiography and his book on Saudi influence in US politics so I was looking forward to trying his first fictional work. I had a bit of trepidation as not everyone can just become a good author of fiction, especially since the book I had just finished was Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let me go", which I think is a masterpiece in literature. So, a hard act to follow both in skill and tone. But I found myself jabbing myself in the ribs at night to keep awake to read more. It's a great fast pace that doesn't really lose momentum. One of the reviewers said it suffered from too many subplots.. Huh??? I am not sure if we read the same book. If you are one of those people who confuses Australia for Iran on a map, then it might be a bit confusing. But then again if you do, you probably wont read this book, nor read in general. But if you pay passing attention to the news (other than Fox) you are more than well equipped to understand the players and the background.

As for writing style, perhaps it was his years of experience studying people in the field as a CIA agent that gave him a literary eye for description and detail. The style is somewhat terse and harsh, but it matches the environment he writes about. I mean, you don't want Henry James writing a modern CIA spy novel. It just wouldn't work. I am generally a glutton for clever metaphors and he has lots littered throughout the book.

"By contrast, the agent waiting across the street seemed not to belong in Washington at all. With his sunken chin and off-the-rack green blazer, he reminded me of an H&R Block accountant from Norman, Oklahoma." Love that stuff.

I am curious to see how the public will react to this book. I almost wonder if the author chose to move to fiction as a way to avoid all the annoying redaction his non-fiction books suffer from. There is a lot in this book that seems awfully plausible and as you get closer to the end, the horrible inevitability of what is to come weighs heavy in the background. You know of course it wont be stopped and actually the character is not close to the specifics to even attempt to stop it. It reminded me of a remarkable quote from (I think) his autobiography, where he stops in a Muslim bookstore and comes across books published in Hamburg advocating all sorts of nasty stuff toward America. When Baer suggests to his bosses that "Hey, I think we should investigate who is calling for the destruction of America" they are uninterested as the real enemy were the Soviets, even though there was no such country anymore. In the case of the book, he is on the trail but for different coincidental reasons.

Really, this is a great and engrossing first work of fiction and look forward to more from Robert Baer.

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