Talk about "ripped from today's headlines"-this exciting and moving audio version of a veteran Baltimore Sun foreign correspondent's incredibly timely thriller still has hot ink and sound bytes emanating from it. Although Fesperman set his book at Guant namo in 2003 after spending some time there, and presumably finished it months before the current outrage about the former military base now serving as a holding unit for suspected terrorists, it reads and sounds-thanks to a cool, ironic and subtly impassioned performance by Colacci-like an Internet news feed. A very young Yemeni prisoner disappears, other prisoners kill themselves and brutal examiners justify their extreme behavior by scoffing at the Geneva Conventions. Colacci brings a large cast to life, starting with FBI interrogator and Arabic speaker Revere Falk, and manages to make Falk's so-called friends and security colleagues as equivocal as they come without breaking a sweat. Even the Cubans-who play a surprising role in the story-come across as a varied group. The only problem with playing this in a car is listeners might think they've turned on NPR by mistake. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, May 1). (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Inter-agency rivalries, Cuban-American politics and prisoners of the War on Terror combine to rattle--quite sharply--the life of an FBI agent in Guantánamo, Cuba. Baltimore Sun reporter Fesperman (The Warlord's Son, 2004, etc.) continues his intelligent novelist's tour of places you'd be terrified to visit (war-ravaged Yugoslavia, the Paki-Afghan border), alighting this time in Guantánamo Bay ("Gitmo"), that American thorn in Fidel's side, where the U.S. has been parking thousands of young men who may or may not be terrorists. Former Marine and current FBI agent Revere Falk is there because a stint in Yemen has polished his already good Arabic, making him an exceptionally valuable interrogator. His grilling of Adnan, a very young, very distressed Yemeni, is interrupted, however, when the body of an American sergeant washes up on the wrong side of the fence dividing Gitmo from Castro's Cuba, and Falk is assigned to clear up the case. The soldier, a reservist from Michigan, was a banker who had been getting worried letters from home about some odd dealings with shadowy Cayman Island banks. Falk quickly finds himself crowded out of both the drowning investigation and the interrogation of Adnan when higher-ups, including Falk's own mentor, arrive from several spooky Washington departments. And, to compound the problems, Falk, after years of silence, has been contacted by the Cubans who blackmailed him into spying for them years ago, when he was a young Marine looking for a taste of Latin love. The intense interest in the Yemeni prisoner and the drowned soldier are related, but the relationship is largely invisible to an increasingly baffled Falk, who realizes that both he and the attractive Army captain he has been dating are both subjects of equally malign interest on the part of island spies. The sharply drawn scenery, fascinating setting and a couple of exceptionally interesting central characters compensate for a plot that threatens occasionally to drown in detail. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In this alleged thriller, the fourth novel by Baltimore Sun journalist Fesperman, the excitement is strictly cerebral. Arabic-speaking FBI special agent Revere Falk is working as an interrogator at the highly secretive government prison located in the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, aka Gitmo. His latest assignment is a young Yemeni prisoner who is suspected of having valuable information about al-Qaeda activities. In the midst of his interrogation efforts, he is pulled away to assist in the investigation of the death of an American soldier whose body has washed ashore onto Cuban territory. As he begins his investigation, Revere finds himself stymied from all sides, and a secret from his past returns to threaten him. Although the insider's view of the Gitmo prison base is engaging, the stock characters (including the usual backbiting government bureaucrats and arrogant military officers) along with a confusing, lackluster plot do not contribute too much of an exciting read. But expect demands based on publicity. --Michael Gannon Copyright 2006 Booklist

Starred Review. Fesperman, a Baltimore Sun reporter whose stints as a foreign war correspondent in Bosnia and Afghanistan added verisimilitude to his earlier spy novels (e.g., The Warlord's Son), here focuses on another news-making locale: Guantánamo, Cuba. Revere Falk escaped a wretched childhood and a future as a lobsterman by joining the U.S. Marines and learning Arabic. Now an FBI interrogator back at the infamous prison camp where he first trained, Falk is charged with eliciting information from a young Yemeni man who may have links to al Qaeda. When the mutilated body of an American officer is discovered on a Cuban beach, Falk is tapped to investigate. Suddenly, everyone wants to know about the case--the army, the CIA, the FBI, even Cuban intelligence--and Falk soon realizes the stakes are much higher than he ever imagined. Fesperman deftly builds suspense, painting a dark picture of the operations at Camp Delta and its shadier cousins, Echo and X-Ray, while including plenty of sympathetic character development. A topnotch topical thriller, this is enthusiastically recommended for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/06.]--Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA

Fesperman, a Baltimore Sun reporter whose stints as a foreign war correspondent in Bosnia and Afghanistan added verisimilitude to his earlier spy novels (e.g., The Warlord's Son), here focuses on another news-making locale: Guant namo, Cuba. Revere Falk escaped a wretched childhood and a future as a lobsterman by joining the U.S. Marines and learning Arabic. Now an FBI interrogator back at the infamous prison camp where he first trained, Falk is charged with eliciting information from a young Yemeni man who may have links to al Qaeda. When the mutilated body of an American officer is discovered on a Cuban beach, Falk is tapped to investigate. Suddenly, everyone wants to know about the case-the army, the CIA, the FBI, even Cuban intelligence-and Falk soon realizes the stakes are much higher than he ever imagined. Fesperman deftly builds suspense, painting a dark picture of the operations at Camp Delta and its shadier cousins, Echo and X-Ray, while including plenty of sympathetic character development. A topnotch topical thriller, this is enthusiastically recommended for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/06.]-Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.