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Colin MacKinnon was chief editor of Middle East Executive Reports. While living in Iran, he taught at Tehran University and the University of Jondi Shapur in Ahwaz. In the mid-1970's, he was director of the American Institute of Iranian Studies in Tehran. He has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages from UCLA and a master of science in Journalism from Columbia University. He has taught Persian at Columbia University and at Georgetown. From 1995-1997, he was Iran Country Coordinator for Amnesty International USA. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with his wife Diane.

An Afghan resistance fighter of the 1980s, once on the CIA payroll, has come back to haunt the agency. Kareem has become an enemy, a killer working closely with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, involved in drug trafficking and other crimes. He has arranged the murder of an American CIA agent in Pakistan, which may mean that an intricate, long-planned CIA operation to capture Osama bin Laden has been compromised.

CIA officer, Paul Patterson, who had run Kareem as an agent during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, sets out to track him down. Patterson navigates a shadow land of intrigue in England, Africa, the Middle East, and the U.S., where truth and lies seem to merge.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Atta and the other September 11 conspirators prepare their attack on the World Trade Center. Seeking Kareem, Patterson comes closer and closer to Atta. The climax is a stunning reversal of everything that Patterson's quest has led him to expect.

Peopled with dedicated operatives trying to protect Americans from Islamic terrorism, rival Washington bureaucrats jockeying for information and position, old CIA hands who operate by their own sets of rules, African rebels, diplomats, and assassins, this gripping and fast-paced novel, written by the author praised by The New Yorker for capturing "the le Carré manner," inspired in part by The 9/11 Report, captures the world of the CIA and the terrorists with the intensity John le Carré brought to the Cold War.

Publishers Weekly

Mixing fact and faction effectively, MacKinnon chronicles the poignant personal story of a senior CIA agent, Paul Patterson, in the months before 9/11. Patterson has been investigating the assassination of an agency operative in Pakistan who had been on the trail of Osama bin Laden before the terrorist became a household name. The case leads Patterson to a disturbing chain of events-porous U.S. immigration policies, White House indifference, CIA bungling-that in hindsight provides the perfect set of circumstances for 9/11. At the same time, Patterson juggles a painful divorce after the accidental death of a teenage son. With this second novel (after 1985's Finding Hoseyn), MacKinnon, a Middle East expert whose specialty is Iran, shows great insight into the inner workings of U.S. intelligence. His clipped prose style, descriptive discipline and tone-perfect dialogue elevate this thriller above the pack, though the central plot, stopping just short of 9/11, ends with more of a whimper than a bang. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.