I just finished the third book in M.H. Sargent’s MP-5 CIA Thriller series, Operation Spider Web. I had not read the first two, Seven Days from Sunday and The Shot to Die For, but as soon as I finished Operation Spider Web, I downloaded them from Amazon for my Kindle. I don’t see how you can get any better value than these e-books for $0.99 each.
Operation Spider Web continues the story of a C.I.A. team, including a female doctor, in performing clandestine intelligence operations against the war on terror. In this book, they are in Afghanistan and get information that a high-level Taliban leader will have a meeting in a house in Kabul. The plot concerns their efforts to determine whether this intelligence is accurate or is a ploy to lure them to the house to capture or kill them. One of the sources for the intelligence is a teenager that had been captured when he injured himself trying to plant an IED on a road that American forces travelled. The other source is the youth’s cousin, a female waitress in an Afghan restaurant that figures predominantly in the plot. The book does an excellent job in portraying the difficulties of obtaining humint (human intelligence) in another culture where most of the population hates you and you have to fight interservice rivalries. The novel is an absolute page-turner, and the meeting turns out to be crucial in avoiding a nuclear exchange. I don’t want to say any more and give away the plot, but it is both compelling and absolutely believable. Five stars!