What do you think?
Rate this book
The Watchmen
Assigned to question an Al Qaeda prisoner whose cooperative nature seems too good to be true, reluctant psychiatrist Louis Finney suffers from nightmares for his part in experiments to induce multiple personalities and finds his assignment challenged by an assassin who would kill the prisoner before he reveals terrorist secrets. 20,000 first printing.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 3, 2004
37 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
John Altman
21 books54 followersJohn Altman's thrillers have sold over a quarter-million copies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the Netherlands. He graduated from Harvard University in 1992. He lives with his wife and children in Princeton, New Jersey, where he is at work on his next book.
"If there are thriller writers betters than this," Jack Higgins said, "I'd like to know who they are."
"If there are thriller writers betters than this," Jack Higgins said, "I'd like to know who they are."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
September 29, 2019
2 stars is very high praise for this disgusting and tedious and boring propaganda piece. Now, let me note why that's so in more detail:
- They have these highly dubious caricature standard Muslim antiheroes. Of course, they are complete with killing pregnant women and kidding them over 'ichor'. And killing little girls and doing other murderous and devious and merciless shit. And his fellow brethren from the terrorist cell. And that's where I stopped counting since it became repetitive. I'm sorry but that's all a bit ridiculous. Why not give the 'assassin' some horns and hoofs to go with that?
- Psychologists do all kinds of horrible shit in this one, including techniques designed to do unspeakable stuff to their victims/suspects/victims. See below.
- It's all unspeakably boring and disgusting and tedious. Did I just repeat myself? It's because I'm bored out of my wits.
Q:
The woman had gone deathly pale. A small pink tongue came out to brush across her lips. “Please,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m pregnant. I’m two months—”
He angled the blade up into the chest cavity, finding the heart. Her mouth made a sound like a popping bubble.
He let go of the blade and took her face in both of his hands. Then leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers, keeping the back of his head facing the park.
He could hear feet pounding. Police—looking for a single man on foot, wearing black. Not looking for a couple on a romantic carriage ride through Central Park, a couple so in love they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Blood was refluxing up the woman’s gullet, gushing from her nose. He gagged, but didn’t lean away. The blood warmly coated his mouth and chin.
Five seconds passed. They kept clip-clopping north. He forced himself to hold still.
The lower half of his face grew wet and tacky. He pulled his head back a few inches, and chanced a glance out of the carriage.
Still more police—spilling down from inside the park, weapons drawn.
He kissed the dead woman again.
When the kiss broke, he risked another glance out of the carriage. For the moment, the coast was clear. The police were behind him, in the place he had been moments before.
He pushed the redhead away. She fell back into the seat, ichor streaming onto her chest. (c)
Q:
“If coercive techniques fail,” he said slowly, “we might consider the implementation of a depatterning strategy. The subject is reduced to an essentially vegetable state, using electroconvulsive shock, sleep deprivation, sensory isolation. Once fully depatterned, he is unable to feed himself; he becomes incontinent; he is unable to state his name or the date. Then we begin to rebuild. The process is called psychic driving. But it’s hardly an exact science. Far better to secure the man’s cooperation, if possible. To work with him, instead of against him.” (c)
Q:
“When dealing with the psychology of the interrogatee, the thing to keep in mind is that Zattout actually wants to cooperate with us. He wants this for two primary reasons. First, because cooperation results in rewards—being let out of his cell, allowed more amenities, and eventually allowed his freedom. Second, and just as important, he wants to gratify his captors. Seeking to please a perceived authority is only human nature. Put simply: He wants a gold star.”
Quinlan was nodding.
“Yet at the same time,” Finney said, “he’s been conditioned to believe certain values. To cooperate with us strikes him, deep down, as a betrayal of those values.”
“So our job,” Quinlan offered, “is to give him an out.”
“Precisely. We want to show him a way to cooperate that still lets him feel right about the choices he makes. As the interrogation progresses, we need to convince him that the values on which he’s been raised are misguided. This involves gaining the subject’s trust. The longer he remains in captivity, the more he naturally will come around to our way of thinking. In this sense, time works to our benefit. Even once the first phase of the interrogation is finished—once it seems that we’ve gotten everything he knows—the process should continue for at least six months. We must remain in a position to catch anything else that happens to shake loose.”
Zattout’s pretense of cooperation, he suggested, should be met with concrete rewards. Only then would the subject learn to expect further rewards following further cooperation. Offering the man a nightly glass of wine might be a good start, compensating Zattout for his assistance while loosening his tongue.…
Warren’s mouth was tugging into a frown. “Wine,” he repeated.
“He’s role adaptive—able to align himself with a new situation easily. We should take advantage of this natural tendency to conform by making his new situation as pleasant as possible. Furthermore, he’s an externalizer. As such he should become talkative with the consumption of alcohol.”
He proceeded to explain the Personality Assessment System, developed by Dr. John Gittinger in Norman, Oklahoma, during the 1940s. Tramps and vagrants on their way to California frequently had managed to get themselves admitted to Gittinger’s hospital during frigid winters. He had used the opportunity to run psychological tests on these “seasonal schizophrenics,” many of whom had worked as short-order cooks or dishwashers before the cold weather drove them to feign mental illness.
Soon Gittinger had seen trends emerging in his data. The short-order cooks demonstrated a talent for remembering numbers, the better to keep track of multiple orders behind the grill. But the dishwashers fared poorly with the digit-span subtest of the Wechsler IQ test. They were better suited to work that could be done alone in a corner, removed from hubbub and distractions.
These observations had become the foundation for the PAS. The short-order cooks were internalizers, Gittinger proposed, who could turn within themselves and block out commotion. The dishwashers were externalizers, too concerned with outside stimuli to manage the trick.
As the system developed, other personality distinctions revealed themselves. The block design subtest could be used to define a man as a regulated personality or a flexible one. The regulated person was able to learn tasks easily, but did not understand the task he had learned; he simply executed it. The flexible person was unable to learn a task without first comprehending the various ins and outs.
Observation proved that internalizers tended to withdraw after consuming alcohol; externalizers became more animated and garrulous. And so a man’s reaction to drink could be anticipated simply by a study of his performance on the digit-span subtest. The system worked both ways—one could observe a man’s behavior after a few drinks and then categorize him with the PAS, anticipating his ability or lack thereof to remember strings of digits. (c)
Q:
He had judged Zattout correctly: his fear of the words Finney had spoken, the prominence of his child-identity. (c)
Q:
They had found seven discrete personas within the woman’s psyche. All had been formed during early childhood, initially taking the guise of imaginary friends. Susan had put faces to these identities, visible only in her bedroom mirror. With time, Robin—an unusually sharp-tongued and observant personality—had forced the other identities to recede. She had become the primary repository for Susan’s negative feelings, of anger and sorrow and grief. And she had held obstinately onto childhood, remaining forever young even as Susan Franklin and her other personas aged. (c)
- They have these highly dubious caricature standard Muslim antiheroes. Of course, they are complete with killing pregnant women and kidding them over 'ichor'. And killing little girls and doing other murderous and devious and merciless shit. And his fellow brethren from the terrorist cell. And that's where I stopped counting since it became repetitive. I'm sorry but that's all a bit ridiculous. Why not give the 'assassin' some horns and hoofs to go with that?
- Psychologists do all kinds of horrible shit in this one, including techniques designed to do unspeakable stuff to their victims/suspects/victims. See below.
- It's all unspeakably boring and disgusting and tedious. Did I just repeat myself? It's because I'm bored out of my wits.
Q:
The woman had gone deathly pale. A small pink tongue came out to brush across her lips. “Please,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m pregnant. I’m two months—”
He angled the blade up into the chest cavity, finding the heart. Her mouth made a sound like a popping bubble.
He let go of the blade and took her face in both of his hands. Then leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers, keeping the back of his head facing the park.
He could hear feet pounding. Police—looking for a single man on foot, wearing black. Not looking for a couple on a romantic carriage ride through Central Park, a couple so in love they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Blood was refluxing up the woman’s gullet, gushing from her nose. He gagged, but didn’t lean away. The blood warmly coated his mouth and chin.
Five seconds passed. They kept clip-clopping north. He forced himself to hold still.
The lower half of his face grew wet and tacky. He pulled his head back a few inches, and chanced a glance out of the carriage.
Still more police—spilling down from inside the park, weapons drawn.
He kissed the dead woman again.
When the kiss broke, he risked another glance out of the carriage. For the moment, the coast was clear. The police were behind him, in the place he had been moments before.
He pushed the redhead away. She fell back into the seat, ichor streaming onto her chest. (c)
Q:
“If coercive techniques fail,” he said slowly, “we might consider the implementation of a depatterning strategy. The subject is reduced to an essentially vegetable state, using electroconvulsive shock, sleep deprivation, sensory isolation. Once fully depatterned, he is unable to feed himself; he becomes incontinent; he is unable to state his name or the date. Then we begin to rebuild. The process is called psychic driving. But it’s hardly an exact science. Far better to secure the man’s cooperation, if possible. To work with him, instead of against him.” (c)
Q:
“When dealing with the psychology of the interrogatee, the thing to keep in mind is that Zattout actually wants to cooperate with us. He wants this for two primary reasons. First, because cooperation results in rewards—being let out of his cell, allowed more amenities, and eventually allowed his freedom. Second, and just as important, he wants to gratify his captors. Seeking to please a perceived authority is only human nature. Put simply: He wants a gold star.”
Quinlan was nodding.
“Yet at the same time,” Finney said, “he’s been conditioned to believe certain values. To cooperate with us strikes him, deep down, as a betrayal of those values.”
“So our job,” Quinlan offered, “is to give him an out.”
“Precisely. We want to show him a way to cooperate that still lets him feel right about the choices he makes. As the interrogation progresses, we need to convince him that the values on which he’s been raised are misguided. This involves gaining the subject’s trust. The longer he remains in captivity, the more he naturally will come around to our way of thinking. In this sense, time works to our benefit. Even once the first phase of the interrogation is finished—once it seems that we’ve gotten everything he knows—the process should continue for at least six months. We must remain in a position to catch anything else that happens to shake loose.”
Zattout’s pretense of cooperation, he suggested, should be met with concrete rewards. Only then would the subject learn to expect further rewards following further cooperation. Offering the man a nightly glass of wine might be a good start, compensating Zattout for his assistance while loosening his tongue.…
Warren’s mouth was tugging into a frown. “Wine,” he repeated.
“He’s role adaptive—able to align himself with a new situation easily. We should take advantage of this natural tendency to conform by making his new situation as pleasant as possible. Furthermore, he’s an externalizer. As such he should become talkative with the consumption of alcohol.”
He proceeded to explain the Personality Assessment System, developed by Dr. John Gittinger in Norman, Oklahoma, during the 1940s. Tramps and vagrants on their way to California frequently had managed to get themselves admitted to Gittinger’s hospital during frigid winters. He had used the opportunity to run psychological tests on these “seasonal schizophrenics,” many of whom had worked as short-order cooks or dishwashers before the cold weather drove them to feign mental illness.
Soon Gittinger had seen trends emerging in his data. The short-order cooks demonstrated a talent for remembering numbers, the better to keep track of multiple orders behind the grill. But the dishwashers fared poorly with the digit-span subtest of the Wechsler IQ test. They were better suited to work that could be done alone in a corner, removed from hubbub and distractions.
These observations had become the foundation for the PAS. The short-order cooks were internalizers, Gittinger proposed, who could turn within themselves and block out commotion. The dishwashers were externalizers, too concerned with outside stimuli to manage the trick.
As the system developed, other personality distinctions revealed themselves. The block design subtest could be used to define a man as a regulated personality or a flexible one. The regulated person was able to learn tasks easily, but did not understand the task he had learned; he simply executed it. The flexible person was unable to learn a task without first comprehending the various ins and outs.
Observation proved that internalizers tended to withdraw after consuming alcohol; externalizers became more animated and garrulous. And so a man’s reaction to drink could be anticipated simply by a study of his performance on the digit-span subtest. The system worked both ways—one could observe a man’s behavior after a few drinks and then categorize him with the PAS, anticipating his ability or lack thereof to remember strings of digits. (c)
Q:
He had judged Zattout correctly: his fear of the words Finney had spoken, the prominence of his child-identity. (c)
Q:
They had found seven discrete personas within the woman’s psyche. All had been formed during early childhood, initially taking the guise of imaginary friends. Susan had put faces to these identities, visible only in her bedroom mirror. With time, Robin—an unusually sharp-tongued and observant personality—had forced the other identities to recede. She had become the primary repository for Susan’s negative feelings, of anger and sorrow and grief. And she had held obstinately onto childhood, remaining forever young even as Susan Franklin and her other personas aged. (c)
March 19, 2020
A psychiatrist tries to ferret out a secret from a westernized terrorist before an assassin kills everyone in the safehouse.
Pretty low octane.
Pretty low octane.
December 31, 2018
When a terrorist is captured and exposed to dubious interrogation techniques an assassin is contracted to kill him before he exposes anyone else in his group. Hard to say for sure who the really bad guys were. The killers or the interrogators?
April 4, 2019
3 stars, my least favorite book so far by Altman, but worth the read.
March 14, 2017
(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)
>An Al Qaeda prisoner named Ali Zattout is moved from Guantánamo Bay to a CIA safe house for observation and interrogation. He is smart, cooperative, and thoroughly Westernized -but is he too good to be true? The man who must question him, Dr. Louis Finney, regrets his days spent working for the U.S. Government. Years have passed since he and his mentor performed experiments designed to develop multiple personalities in unsuspecting patients, but only recently have his guilty nightmares begun to subside. Now his mentor appears on Finney's doorstep, terminally ill, asking him to consult for a critically important CIA case.
But the CIA isn't the only group interested in Zattout's information. His capture has aroused concerns at the highest ranks of Al Qaeda. An assassin schooled in ancient arts of meditation and murder is sent to eliminate Zattout before he discloses their secrets. The CIA safe house is as heavily guarded as the secret of its location, but Zattout is not the only traitor within its walls
*2.5 stars*
Spies and espionage novels have been making a bit of a comeback in popularity - at least in our bookstore. So this book came up for reading so I took the opportunity to give it a go and see if this was something I could recommend to my customers.
On one hand, this was a fascinating look at the processes of interrogating suspects without resorting to violence. An awkward subplot about an assassin was going to add some depth to the story but, in fact, only detracted from it. While I thought Finney was a decently written character, the same can't be said for the rest of the "cast."
But the biggest letdown for me was the fact that nothing really happens. Lots of things "almost" happen but, for the most part, it is a very uneventful novel.
Paul
ARH
>An Al Qaeda prisoner named Ali Zattout is moved from Guantánamo Bay to a CIA safe house for observation and interrogation. He is smart, cooperative, and thoroughly Westernized -but is he too good to be true? The man who must question him, Dr. Louis Finney, regrets his days spent working for the U.S. Government. Years have passed since he and his mentor performed experiments designed to develop multiple personalities in unsuspecting patients, but only recently have his guilty nightmares begun to subside. Now his mentor appears on Finney's doorstep, terminally ill, asking him to consult for a critically important CIA case.
But the CIA isn't the only group interested in Zattout's information. His capture has aroused concerns at the highest ranks of Al Qaeda. An assassin schooled in ancient arts of meditation and murder is sent to eliminate Zattout before he discloses their secrets. The CIA safe house is as heavily guarded as the secret of its location, but Zattout is not the only traitor within its walls
*2.5 stars*
Spies and espionage novels have been making a bit of a comeback in popularity - at least in our bookstore. So this book came up for reading so I took the opportunity to give it a go and see if this was something I could recommend to my customers.
On one hand, this was a fascinating look at the processes of interrogating suspects without resorting to violence. An awkward subplot about an assassin was going to add some depth to the story but, in fact, only detracted from it. While I thought Finney was a decently written character, the same can't be said for the rest of the "cast."
But the biggest letdown for me was the fact that nothing really happens. Lots of things "almost" happen but, for the most part, it is a very uneventful novel.
Paul
ARH
March 3, 2010
• I haven’t really read too much in the espionage genre, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this novel. I really wasn’t impressed. I don’t think it’s the genre, rather I think this was just a weak novel. Most of the plot was predictable. The characters lacked any real depth. The main character, Finney, was ok, but I couldn’t bring myself to care that much for him. I was hoping at the end there would at least be some good action. Not only was the action about as predictable as you could get, it was also written in about the most boring way possible. I doubt I’ll give this guy another shot.
February 10, 2014
Reminded me of the complaints people sometimes made about Seinfield - it was a show about nothing. After reading this, although obviously plot events happened, I felt like nothing really had happened - nothing had really changed from the beginning to the end. Part of that, I suspect, was the author's intent, but in any event, although individual bits of the story were well done and interesting, because of that the novel as a whole failed to wow me.
December 4, 2019
Oh. So, that's what a watchman is. Great ending if you don't mind violence. Interesting insights into how to fight like a terrorist. The middle section was difficult to follow. All the jumping around from character to character and scene to scene was exhausting. Adding to review: Of the thriller/mystery books I've read this one has stuck with me the most. It was slower reading and sort of irritating to read but is actually great story telling.
August 6, 2012
After reading this book my wife picked up at a used bookstore, I was surprised to learn that the author was not more popular. I thought it was a well formed plot with a good ending. I found myself flying through the book not wanting to put it down. I think I will give Altman's other novels a try.
June 20, 2009
Engrossing story of the detention/interrogation of terrorist and the struggle to gain information without need to torture
April 28, 2010
A rather dark, slow moving story about a psychologist working for
the CIA interrogating a terrorist with a sub plot about an assassin
assigned to assassinate the terrorist.
the CIA interrogating a terrorist with a sub plot about an assassin
assigned to assassinate the terrorist.
October 4, 2012
I watched the movie and didn't get it so I read the book and I loved it. Rorschach was definitely my favorite.
Want to read
June 9, 2011looks good
Read
July 27, 2011First book I've read by this author. Very good... really makes you stop and think and wonder.
July 4, 2012
Great read but the vocab was pretentious.
August 22, 2016
Current world events concerning terrorism. A back story/psychological profile.
December 9, 2018
I could not get excited about this one.
October 11, 2024
Ok read.
January 27, 2013
Mediocre - ending unsatisfactory
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews