Maas is a good story teller and he keeps your attention the whole while as he takes you from the beginnings of Wilson's thirst for money at age 8 to his acquisition of prime property in the Washington, D.C. area as a result of his secretive and illegal dealings with foreign powers. Though CIA senior officers were members along with him in phoney corporations he set up to conduct his "import-export" business), any official connection to the CIA while all this was going on isn't clear. Yet the prospect of any CIA connection to Wilson's shipments of thousands of pounds of C-4 (plastique) to Libya and Mohamar Kaddafi is, indeed, very troubling. As the author pointed out, when jets started falling out of the air (Lockerbie) and discos blowing up (Rome), you couldn't help but feel that if not for Wilson, many of these things might not ever have happened. It seems that whereever 20th century evil was to be found, the CIA was either right there, or not too far behind.

This doesn't give you any great insights into the inner workings of the world of spooks, but it is certainly an interesting read and does afford at times a look at how the Justice and State Departments work--or fail to work.

Peter Maas may be a successful non-fictionn writer, but on the basis of this book, as a novelist he has no talent. Taking anecdotes from real life (as Maas does over and over in this book) and arranging them in chronological order is not fiction writing -- its lazy commercialism. This book is terrible.

The authors past books lend him a lot of credibility with this topic. I found the information about Chinese organized crime to be fascinating, but some of the "love interest" storylines weren't that important to the gist of the story. I would definatley recommend the book.

have read non fiction stuff by maas, so decided to give this novel a try . . . interesting, though not great . . . (i prefer his non fiction stuff) . . . but got to listen to cassette tapes of book, so i would recommend it on that basis (though don't know if i would have enjoyed it as much had i actually read it).

A father who is slow to respond to his son's needs, creates a family version of the Irish Tragedy.

THis book incorrectly focuses on the FBI as the capturers of Ames and leaves out the mole hunting CIA team's chase of Ames. While they did mess up and take years to identify the problem, the CIA team caught Ames. THis book is also way short on providing insight into Ames motives, tactics and techniques. A MUCH better book on the subject is "confessions of a spy" by Pete Early. Earley is the only journalist that was able to interview Ames and his well researched book provides the story in Ames own words as well as interviews with his russian accomplices.