The Amateur Spy, Dan Fesperman
The Amateur Spy, Dan Fesperman
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The Amateur Spy

Author: Dan Fesperman

Narrator: Dan Fesperman

Unabridged: 14 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/13/2025

Synopsis

The Amateur Spy—Dan Fesperman’s most galvanizing thriller yet—takes us to a flashpoint of global intrigue, recasting the spy novel for the post–9/11 world: Anyone might be watching; everyone is suspect.

Burned out by years of humanitarian-aid work, Freeman and Mila Lockhart have retreated to an idyllic Greek island. But on the first night of their new life they are surprised by three intruders who seem to know everything about Freeman—including a haunting secret he has long kept from Mila. They use it to blackmail him into spying on an old Palestinian friend in Jordan. Overnight, Freeman is plunged into the maelstrom of the Middle East and is quickly in over his head.

In suburban Washington, D.C., meanwhile, a prosperous Palestinian-American couple, Abbas and Aliyah Rahim, are still grieving for their daughter, accidentally killed while vacationing abroad. Abbas, a surgeon whose patients number among the nation’s elite, blames her death on the bureaucratic machinations of overly suspicious officials. Aliyah fears he may be reeling toward fanaticism, and her efforts to avert this take her to Jordan. Like Freeman, she is soon overwhelmed by the region’s dangerous passions and complexities.

As their paths converge, Freeman and Aliyah—both desperately worried about the loved ones they left behind—must swiftly separate fact from illusion, enemy from friend. The consequences of failure could be catastrophic. . . .

About Dan Fesperman

Dan Fesperman is a journalist and novelist whose travels have taken him to thirty countries and three war zones. His book Lie in the Dark won the Crime Writers' Association of Britain's John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award, The Small Boat of Great Sorrows won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, and The Prisoner of Guantanamo won the Dashiell Hammett Award from the International Association of Crime Writers. He lives in Baltimore.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Charles on December 06, 2009

Got plot? It’s the one thing a thriller writer has to have, and the one thing a reviewer must not reveal very much of. Which makes reviewing thrillers difficult because, frankly, most thrillers don’t have much of anything else. Dan Fesperman has two good plots in his new novel, “The Amateur Spy.” Here......more

Goodreads review by Nina on January 23, 2013

At various points throughout this book I kept wondering whether the narrator, Freeman Lockhart, was indeed what he said he was - an amateur spy. Even now I still wonder to what extent he was telling the truth. So a lot of questions raised, and many not answered. But a fun read, nevertheless.......more

Goodreads review by Kent on November 01, 2016

The first four books by this author were wonderful, so my expectations coming into this one were quite high. Within the first few pages, however, I felt that something wasn't quite right. It seemed as though Fesperman strayed away from what made his first books so entertaining: a cerebral plot that......more

Goodreads review by Susan on June 21, 2017

This is not my usual genre but I am making an effort to read books set in different countries around the world. This was the one I selected for Jordan, I have already read Lawrence of Arabia. This is a good story with believable and interesting characters. There are two stories one set in the USA wit......more

Goodreads review by Marie on July 26, 2017

You do have to pay attention while reading this book or you lose who's who. But it is an interesting spy thriller set in the Middle East, that part of the world that is always in the news, and involves someone who has become angry because of mistreatment of his family because of discrimination based......more

Quotes

“The Amateur Spy blends Tom Clancy’s readability with Robert Ludlum’s insider touch and a soupcon of Graham Greene anomie. The result is an intensely provocative tale about how we live in a world where terrorism is a given, mayhem presumed and genocide little more than collateral damage . . . Darkly compelling.”
–Baltimore Sun

“Fesperman’s novel transcends the formulas . . . He has mastered his genre [but] you can sense him trying to move toward writers like Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, writers with a nuanced and ambivalent vision of the world and its conflicts.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Exceptional . . . The greatest strength of The Amateur Spy is this portrait of Jordan, a world that most of us know almost nothing about . . . Fesperman writes so well that it's easy to follow wherever he leads . . . Chilling.”
–Washington Post

“War correspondent Fesperman shines the light of his insider's knowledge into the dark corners of Jordan and Jerusalem in his gripping fifth thriller . . . Freeman may be an amateur spy, but Fesperman proves once again that he's a consummate professional.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Foreign correspondent and novelist Fesperman has created another contender for his growing list of prize winners . . . The plot is complex, the sense of place powerful, and the characterization memorable . . . Fesperman expertly builds the tension.”
–Library Journal

“More classy suspense from Fesperman.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Praise from the UK:

“Dan Fesperman, a war correspondent with the Baltimore Sun, has served his time in Bosnia, Afghanistan and the Middle East. It shows: The Amateur Spy offers a gritty verisimilitude against a subtle political backdrop . . . Fesperman is especially good on the murky frontier where journalists, aid-workers and spies trade information, each seeking something for nothing. He is honing the genre of intelligent political thrillers. Foreign correspondents should note: they now have some new standards to match.”
–The Economist

“Fesperman has few equals when it comes to generating tension . . . But he is equally good at characterizing his vulnerable, conflicted protagonists . . . Powerful.”
–Daily Express

“Dan Fesperman’s novels always offer interesting and thought-provoking commentary on contemporary world events and in The Amateur Spy he tackles Middle East terrorism with a story that contains a disquietingly topical element . . . A fine thriller to add to his impressive body of work.”
–Sunday Telegraph

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