World Without End

by Chris Mooney

Narrowly escaping with his life when a mission ends in the death of his fellow operatives, Steve Conway, the leader of the CIA's Information Warfare Analysis Center, tracks a faceless killer who specializes in the theft of high-tech military weapons but whose motives are unknown. By the author of Deviant Ways.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Crime

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Hailed as “one of the best thriller writers working today” by Lee Child and “a wonderful writer” by Michael Connelly, Chris Mooney is the international bestselling author of twelve novels, most recently, The Snow Girls. His fourth book, The Missing, the first in the Darby McCormick series, was a main selection of the International Book of the Month Club and an instant bestseller in over thirteen countries. The Mystery Writer’s Association nominated Chris’s third book, Remembering Sarah, for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. Foreign rights to his novels have been sold to twenty-eight territories. He has sold nearly two million copies of his books.

Chris teaches writing courses at Harvard and the Harvard Extension School, and lives in the Boston area with his wife and son. His new novel, Blood World, will be released in August of 2020.

International Praise for Chris Mooney:

“Scary voice, scary talent. Mooney is one of the best thriller writers working today.”
– Lee Child

“A wonderful writer . . . Compelling, thrilling and touching.”
– Michael Connelly

“Harrowing, gripping, haunting, gut-wrenching and beautifully written.”
– Harlan Coben

“Chris Mooney has written his finest novel, and that’s saying something indeed.”
– Dennis Lehane

“It will keep you up past your bedtime.”
– Karin Slaughter

“A thriller that will chill your blood, break your heart and make your pulse race.”
– Mark Billingham

"Chris Mooney is an exceptional thriller writer, with the rare gift of being able to of balance action with compassion, and grit with humanity. I envy those who have yet to read him."
– John Connolly

“The Missing is the season’s most unrelenting thriller. It will keep readers enthralled from its gripping opening chapters to its shocking last page.”
– George Pelecanos

“Mooney writes like a man on fire.”
– Linda Fairstein

“The smart money has long been on Chris Mooney, one of crime fiction’s rising stars.”
– Laura Lippman

Reviews

[Sharon Mccall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A step away from his Darby McCormick series Chris Mooney introduces us to the world of black ops CIA / IT style.

Steve Conway undercover operative for IWAC, the Information Warfare Analysis Centre, a branch of the CIA that doesn't exist, becomes embroiled in a battle that if he loses could have catastrophic results on how terrorists could infiltrate anything anywhere and no one would know.

Tasked to protect the designer of a cloaking suit that renders the wearer totally invisible and the suit itself from a thief called Angel Eyes, things go awry when the man he is supposed to protect is kidnapped and they try to ensure that Steve is too dead to find them.

In trying to stay alive and find both the suit and its designer, Steve doesn't know who to trust, who the bad guys are, and has to work out where Angel Eyes sits on the scheme of things. With the suit having been encrypted and the bad guys being told that Conway has the code - its the one thing in his part that gives him a chance at coming out of this alive.

The story is full of twists and turns and definitely not for the light hearted as Mooney can get quite detailed in the treatment dished out by Russian mafia henchmen and the torture passed out by other characters.

In a world where technology is affecting the way wars are fought, this story is not as far fetched as it may have been a few years ago. And for me, thinking about what would happen if this kind of technology was readily available - and who is to say it isn't - this was a reason why this book worked.

[rebellyell666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inhalt:

Unsichtbar (Invisible) sein! Wer träumt manchmal nicht auch davon? Steve Conway, CIA Agent einer Spezialeinheit, bald nicht mehr: Angel Eyes, ein Wahnsinniger, bemächtigt sich seit Jahren den hochentwickelten Waffen, die im CIA per Prototyp gebaut werden. Und unsichtbar zu sein ist um Längen besser als Laserwaffen, die blind machen können…

Schreib-/Erzählstil:

Unverkennbar Mooney! Er setzt sich mit der Materie, die er in manchen Teilen recherchiert hat, wie sein Nachwort beweist, auseinander und lässt seine Charaktere auf das Spiel mit dem Anzug, der unsichtbar machen kann, ein. Dabei wirkt es schnell so, dass diese ein Eigenleben entwickeln samt Vergangenheit und beängstigender Gegenwart.

Meine Meinung:

Mooney prangte vor Jahren auf allen Plakaten: Sein Debut um die Agentin Darby McCormick „Victim“ war in aller Munde. Und wahrlich: Es schockte, es ließ aufschrecken und war an Brutalität und makaberer Menschenkenntnis nicht zu überbieten.

Mit seinen Werken „Missing“ und „Secret“ hat er zudem solide Thriller vorgelegt, die sich unabhängig von Darby mit anderen Themen befassen. Auch hier ist er ein Pageturner und unterhält den Leser bis zum letzten Wort.

Mit Invisible hat er einen anschaulichen Thriller vorgelegt, der sehr viel hinterfragt. Zuerst steht natürlich die Macht im Vordergrund, die Unsichtbarkeit unter Umständen bieten kann. Zudem sind aber auch die Personen stark davon abhängig gemacht worden, welche mit der Macht durchaus etwas anfangen können – das macht uns Mooney anhand seiner Protagonisten deutlich. Weiterhin zielt er auf die Vergangenheit der Welt (hier der gern genommene Nationalsozialismus) und die Zukunft ab, wenn man sich schon damals hätte unsichtbar machen können. Außerdem – und da sind wir auch schon bei unserem Hauptprotagonisten – bietet er auch einen Antikämpfer. Einen Helden, der bald nur noch diesen Anzug vernichten will. Und dieses Spiel im Gesamten betrachtet bietet einen hohen Unterhaltungsfaktor, der mir ausgesprochen gut gefiel. Ein Gedanke, den ich zwischendurch hatte, war, „Invisible“ hätte auch gut und gerne „Irritation“ heißen können, da man stets gefordert war, in höchster Irritation, die Seiten auseinander zu halten.

Fazit:

Mooney hat seinem Namen wieder alle Ehre gemacht und mich nicht enttäuscht. Das Ende fällt etwas anders aus, als für mich persönlich erhofft, bleibt so aber realistisch und passt zur lesbaren und durchdachten Story.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good story hidden behind a lack of editing. I felt like it was rushed to get edited, and there were a lot of clear mistakes in it which should have been avoided.
If this was the first Mooney book I'd read, I wouldn't have read any more. (Thankfully it wasn't!)

[Jason Ravara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really, really good read. So good, in fact, I finished it in less than a week (even though it's been a busy week at work). The story perfectly illustrates the complications that occur in one's life and the choices we make in response to those.

If you like novels that revolve about spies/secret agents, then this book is for you. It's got all the secrecy/betrayals/black ops you might want or need. ALSO, the GADGETS are so damned awesooome!!! And, given the state of today's technology, I daresay this is totally believable. Give it a few decades and we might actually see them live! :D

It's got enough twists to keep you excited and thrilled as you ravenously turn the pages. Unlike the previous books I've read this year, this one's ending is so satisfactory: it perfectly wrapped up everything like a Christmas present.. :D

If you like psychoanalysis and getting skin deep into how people think and what makes them tick, then you'll surely have a blast with this book. Since almost every major character in this book is trying to outwit one another, everyone tries to psychoanalyze their enemies and try to come out on top.

One comment/complaint though.. and this one contains a major spoiler..

Somewhere in the early chapters of the book, Amon Faust said in his mind that there is no place in his organization for women since they are natural slaves to their emotions and hormones. So, how come Pasha suddenly works for him??


Also, I just wanna express my utmost sadness and regret for
WARNING: SPOILER

the death of Gunther. I actually liked the kid. It's just sad that the one with the purest heart(imho) ended up dying. T.T

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty good read but Mooney's books always tend to have mistakes and/or very implausible plot arcs. This one has some connection to the previous book though it's not really a sequel. One of the characters in Deviant Ways is mentioned in this book. He was a former FBI agent but for some inexplicable reason they now have the CIA looking for him. That's unusual because the FBI and CIA aren't really known for their close cooperation. If Mooney had done a bit of research, he would have known that.

In his previous book, Mooney made a pretty obvious and stupid error when his characters talked about Auschwitz being in Germany. In this book, Mooney seems to be doing everything he can to show us that he's read up on the Holocaust and has learned from his mistake. He keeps drawing comparisons between the Holocaust and his story. They make little sense and have nothing to do with the story. His hero visits a Holocaust memorial and reflects on people filing into trains. There's no explanation for this and Mooney writes about the Nazis like a high school kid who just found out about them. A lot of filler here. Every chapter starts with an extremely detailed description of the decorations in the room, food, clothes, whatever. Setting the scene is fine but long drawn out paragraphs are just pointless.

The main character has access to a video of who the bad guys really area and he doesn't watch it for over 50 pages. This is when I started not to care anymore. We are reading page after page of speculation on who it might be when he could just watch the tape. I was actually yelling at the book for being so unrealistic. Who would sit on a tape that solves the crime they're working on? Nobody.

Plenty of stupid things in this book that should have been caught by an editor like having a character called John McFadden and then suddenly calling him Peter McFadden. Or two characters saying they haven't spoken in two days and the next page they say they haven't talked in five days. A guy is tied to a dentist chair and his feet are tied to the "stirrups." What dentist uses stirrups?

Another thing Mooney does in several of his early books is introduce technology that doesn't exist. This wouldn't be an issue if he set his books a few years into the future. This book has a bunch of advanced technology that is probably years away from development and it always skips the record for me. The main character has a palm pilot that's also a taser but he's still having to plug in a huge McDonald's style headset into his phone in order to talk on it because Bluetooth hadn't come out yet. It gets confusing trying to figure out what's real and what isn't. Also, some of his inventions seem a bit childish, such as a foam sprayed onto a person that makes them stick to the ground. Didn't Batman have something like that? Or was it the Joker? Or a suit that makes you invisible. That was Lord of the Rings right? They even have satellites that can see through walls from the sky! Wowwww. Sounds very War Games to me. Lol Easy solution would have been to set the story in 2020 so the reader could easily suspend their disbelief.

Another big annoyance was the character that makes visitors to his home wear a special suit that will insulate him from their germs. That would be totally fine if he didn't constantly go into crowded hospitals with germs everywhere, busy restaurants, and heavily populated cities. Why would he even bother with all the extreme measures in his house if he's just going to go out where people are coughing and hacking all around him?

The central plot arc is that the bad guy keeps stealing all the new technology that's been developed and killing the person who developed it. The thing that didn't make sense is that everyone behaves as though once the prototype is stolen, the technology is lost forever. According to Mooney, a million dollar technology is reliant upon it's inventor to work. He's the only one who knows about it and the only one who can access it. It's beyond ridiculous to think that a company would put that much responsibility in one person's hands. At one point the hero's co-workers keep asking him for the code to a program that was stolen. He doesn't know it but for some reason they keep asking him. It made no sense that they wouldn't believe him. It also didn't make sense that the hero wouldn't wonder why they wanted to know the code so badly when they didn't even have the technology. They acted as though without the code there was no way the program could ever work again. Couldn't the inventor just come up with new software if necessary?

The Russian mob makes an appearance in this book and I think Mooney had recently watched the Sopranos when he wrote this. He had these tough killer Russians blabbing everything over the phone and loudly in public. It's pretty unrealistic to assume that a Russian gangster would talk to an American government official so openly about his plans. Rarely do you hear of Russian mobsters talking much at all in English let alone chatting openly about all the crimes he's going to commit. In his desire to make the guy seem more violent, Mooney confused fictional portrayals with what's realistic.

There are some very nice plot twists however, and the book keeps you interested the entire time. The only problem there is that Mooney really dumbs it down for the reader by repeating the opposite of what will happen over and over. For instance, he will have the hero say, "I know I can trust that guy. He would never lie to me. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that guy." Then that guy turns out to be a liar. It gets to where it's very easy to guess the twists because Mooney is trying so hard for the surprise, he ruins it.

[Leslie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Information Warfare Analysis Center is a fictional branch of the CIA that keeps track of technology and its uses. This group is chasing person known as Angel Eyes who steals technology. It doesn't re-appear anywhere--it simply vanishes. There are a lot of plot twists that I found difficult to follow. I didn't care about the plot or the characters, so I didn't finish the book.

[Amanda Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Conway is a member of a covert group within the CIA called the Information Warfare Analysis Center (IWAC) He’s desperate to prove himself and forget his terrible background and childhood. He’s equipped with futuristic gadgets and cars that do everything. Conway is a new James Bond. The story is well researched and believable. The technology described may be imagined, but reality will catch up with it soon.

[Edd Hayfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is perfectly spaced out. There are alot of twists. I really enjoyed this book.

[Don]

added September 19, 2008