The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

The Cover Wife Reviews

• 
  Left Coast Justin

  This was two books in one!
  
  -The first book I've read by Dan Fesperman
  -The last book I'll read by Dan Fesperman
  
  No harm, no foul. Fesperman's a professional novelist, writing to a specific audience, and I am not among those he's trying to reach. And I got this from the library rather than laying out my own pocketful of pesos for it.
  
  A character in this book noted that she knew within moments of meeting somebody whether she wanted to sleep with him or not. I knew within a few pages that this author was destined for the friend zone.
• 
  Mary

  I haven’t read anything by Dan Fesperman before, but I really enjoyed this fast - paced thriller which offers a bit of back story on 9/11 and the failure of our own government agencies to trust and share information with each other. I’m also reminded that many unsung heroes fight daily to protect our nation against an enemy it seems we may never vanquish. Many have compared this novel to Tom Clancy, and I would just say that The Cover Wife is a much more enjoyable read for avoiding all the inscrutable technology that Clancy employs in his novels.
  Highly recommended for readers of political thrillers.
• 
  Kelly

  The Cover Wife feels very much like the political thrillers of the Tom Clancy sort, and while it definitely follows the slow burn nature of a Clancy novel, it manages to do so more quickly - which is a good thing. The story is told from multiple perspectives, the primary being Claire, an agent based in Paris that is sent to Hamburg, Germany on assignment as the wife of an author of a book that is likely to inflame members of Al-Qaeda. But Claire isn't being told everything by her team or her handler, as she discovers on her side mission to observe an report on a group of young Muslim men that includes Mahmoud. The reader also hears the story from his perspective, as a young man with an American mother and a Moroccan father that is trying to be accepted into the group that runs into the speed bump of a fellow acolyte's wife, who makes him question the choices he's making. The final perspective is from another alphabet agent, the rounds out the story and helps makes the reader question just beneficial it is to have multiple agencies working with or against each other in "America's" attempts to root out terrorism, occasionally to devastating effect. This book is not necessarily for someone who's looking for a page-turning thriller, but if you enjoy the slow build-up to a complicated story this is a great book to dive into.
• 
  Michael Martz

  Dan Fesperman's "The Cover Wife" is an imaginative look at the activities of the Hamburg cell that was instrumental in the 9/11 attack on America, as seen through the eyes of CIA and FBI operatives on the ground. Claire Saylor, the eponymous cover wife, is assigned to be the deeply undercover fake marital partner of a Salman Rushdie-type author the CIA is dangling out in a book tour in Hamburg in an attempt to gather intelligence on al Queda. Her boss in the endeavor is playing the project rather oddly, which raises Claire's antennae since she has a history with him. Additionally, Ken Donlan, an FBI liaison to the CIA, is in town as well putting together information on a Syrian that's on his radar. Of course, the CIA isn't aware of the FBI's presence. The major players on the AQ side are all members of a mosque that's run by a true firebrand and the action begins when a new player, Mahmoud, shows up with the mosque crowd and begins to be integrated into their activities. Photos are taken during surveillance and most of the mosque group are identified, but Mahmoud isn't known by any of the alphabetic agencies. Except maybe he is..... Anyone who lived through the horrors of 9/11 will recognize a few of the names of the mosque cell's members, so you can imagine where this story is heading. To avoid spoilage, I'll stop here on the plot description.
  
  This is a fictional account of pre-9/11 action that doesn't exactly feel real but has more heft than straight fiction. Fesperman's writing is OK but dialogue isn't a strength and although the descriptions of tradecraft seem realistic they're not quite as detailed as you see from masters of the genre. All told, The Cover Wife is a solid "what if" effort based on historical events I hope we never experience again.
• 
  Ray Palen

  The bulk of the action in THE COVER WIFE takes place in October 1999. It will be important and significant that this timeframe was decided for the story, and all will be revealed during the finale of this tense and perfectly paced novel.
  
  CIA Agent Claire Saylor meets with one of her superiors to learn about her next mission. It turns out she is being sent to Hamburg, Germany, to pose as the wife of a controversial Professor and politico who has seriously angered the Muslim world with his depiction and interpretation of their sacred Quran. Also in Hamburg at the same time is a young Muslim man named Mahmoud who is spending time at a place called Al Quds prior to attending the wedding of one of his colleagues. It will slowly be revealed that the group at Al Quds have a dangerous agenda of their own.
  
  As Claire is settling into her role as the wife of the outspoken academic named Winston Armitage, she also briefs him on her role as part of his security force and needs to learn the landscape quickly to keep him safe. During this time, Winston is set to make several local appearances and lectures which will put him directly in the line of fire. She hears him speak with the press and denounce many of the Quran’s texts that are held sacred, including the prophecy of Muslim’s sacrificing themselves in the name of martyrdom and the hundreds of heavenly virgins who will be waiting for them on the other side.
  
  Things will get interesting when another special agent from the FBI decides to settle into the same area for surveillance on the Middle Easterners in the area and their possible connections to Al Queda. Even though they are on the same team, some of Agent Donlan’s actions will put Claire’s mission in jeopardy. The danger escalates in a sudden, violent event whereby Claire was speaking with one of their security force, a man named Lute, when he is violently attacked and has his throat cut by a Middle Eastern man dressed all in white. It turns out the killer was a cook at the hotel and Claire is overwhelmed with fear of how close she may have come to death herself.
  
  Claire is nearly taken off the assignment by her handler when a photo surfaces of the group of Muslim men they were currently tracking. Claire knows she was not the one who took this photo and would never endanger her own mission. It is only later that we learn it came from Donlan, who is on his own mission and had no idea of the negative impact of such a photo appearing public ally could cause. A huge plot twist occurs which turns the entire mission upside down and ends up seeing Claire going rogue on her own in defiance of her own agency.
  
  Things will culminate at the wedding of one of Mahmoud’s colleagues. Claire and Donlan both plan on surveilling this event and they will not be the only international agency there. It is at this point where we will learn for sure what role Mahmoud is playing in this game and just how dangerous his colleagues really are. It is the last chapter of the novel, set on September 11, 2001, where the jaw-dropping connections of the players involved up to this point with the biggest terrorist act ever committed on U.S. soil will all come to light. This was an absolutely stunning way to finish this taut novel.
  
  THE COVER WIFE is the first novel I have read from author Dan Fesperman, but it made such an impression on me that I want to seek out his back-titles as well. This novel was the thinking-man’s espionage book and the type of story you will have a difficult time not finishing in one sitting. I loved Fesperman’s writing style that did not overload you with data and acronyms but made you feel the entire time that you were there with the characters and experiencing each plot twist along with them. A brilliant read!
  
  Reviewed by Ray Palen for Book Reporter
• 
  Denise

  Undercover at a conference in Hamburg in October 1999 as the wife of an American professor whose controversial new interpretation of part of the Quran has made him a target for infuriated religious extremists, CIA officer Claire Saylor is also tasked with another job: Surveilling members of an Al Qaeda cell gathering at the local Al Quds mosque. Among them is a young man named Mahmoud, whose POV gives the reader insight into the inner workings of the terror cell as it plots an operation that will shake the world two years hence.
  
  Of course, the setting alone makes it obvious who some of the major players in the book will be long before their names are mentioned. Fesperman crafts a plausible, deftly plotted character-driven spy thriller that puts a spotlight on the kind of interagency squabbling and missed chances that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. An excellent, engrossing read.
• 
  Gary Branson

  Solid spy story with good suspense. Slow burn to a fast peg turner, a thinking person’s spy novel. Reminded me of Stella Rimington at her best.
• 
  Cook Memorial Public Library

  Read about Karen's Pick of the Week on the Cook Memorial Public Library blog, Shelf Life:
  https://shelflife.cooklib.org/2021/08...
  
  Check our catalog:
  https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...
• 
  Russell Atkinson

  This top-notch thriller was a bit of a surprise to me. I knew it was a CIA-related story and not current day and had high reviews. I thought it was going to be yet another Cold War Soviet vs. The West story, a genre that I think is past its prime. Instead it turned out to be set in 1999 in Germany involving the West vs. Al Qaeda, not the Soviets.
  
  The story had its share of exaggerations and dramatizations that render it inaccurate, but it has captured the look and feel of real operations against high-profile targets. As a retired FBI agent who worked counterintelligence for most of my career, I can attest to this. I was pleased to see the CIA and FBI agents working together, at least at the street level. The author resorted to the stale trope of inter-agency rivalry at the higher levels, which makes for drama but is totally unrealistic. Still, the story never lost the patina of credibility. The protagonist, Claire, is a bit too much of a TV version heroine - very good-looking, capable of taking down men in hand-to-hand combat, and so on, but there was very little of that. It was largely an accurate portrayal of what surveillance is like and all the things that can go wrong when the lines of communications are not good. It also tells the story from the viewpoint of a member of the Al Qaeda group being monitored. The suspense builds throughout on both sides of the line.
• 
  Jo Shaw

  This was my first experience of Dan Fesperman’s work, and I have to say it won’t be my last, because I really enjoyed his writing style, and the subject matter. I found The Cover Wife to be an intelligently written spy thriller that kept my attention throughout. It follows CIA agent Claire Saylor as she goes undercover as the wife of a Professor at a conference in Hamburg. Parallel to Claire’s story is that of Mahmoud Yassin, a member of the Hamburg cell, a group of radical Islamists plotting something big, and recruiting new members in order to build the cell.
  
  This is a fictionalised story drawing on the knowledge that some of the radicals in the Hamburg cell of radical Islamists went on to be some of the hijackers involved on 9/11 together with others who were also involved in the 9/11 plot. I find it really interesting when some of the characters within a fictional story are infamous in real life, and some of the characters that Mahmoud interacted with were the hijackers. This book weaves fact seamlessly into fiction, which added to the tension. We also get another perspective, from a member of another agency, given that there are occasions when agencies do not work together for a common goal.
  
  The Cover Wife was a thoughtful and intelligent spy thriller that is both gripping and poignant, given that we already know what happened on 9/11.
• 
  Tripfiction

  Thriller set in HAMBURG
  
  
  
  The Cover Wife is a work of fiction woven around real life events. The 9/11 bombers did, indeed, meet at the at a mosque in Hamburg to plan their journey to the training camps in Afghanistan and on to the United States (as they do in the book). They were a motley collection of young men convinced that their view of the world was the way the way forward.
  
  The Cover Wife is the story of the observation of the mosque. And it is a quite complicated story involving deception, duplicity, and the passing of information on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. The CIA and the FBI get in each other’s way – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. And on occasion the local German police are also involved. No wonder it is seriously compromised.
  
  The cover wife of the title is Claire Saylor, an at times maverick CIA officer working for an equally at times maverick boss, Paul Bridger. Claire and Paul have history from a shared assignment in Berlin a few years previously. Her ostensible mission is to be the ‘wife’ of a US academic who has some pretty outspoken views, which make him a likely target for an attack. The academic is publicising a new book and Claire, plus a whole bunch of other operatives, are there to protect him at a launch event in Hamburg. Paul has, though, also asked Claire to spend a couple of hours each evening checking out the happenings at the mosque. She does, and runs across FBI agent Ken Dolan on a similar mission… They become increasingly focussed on a young guy who has recently joined the mosque. They see him as vulnerable (and turnable) as he has fallen for the estranged (and very Westernised) wife of one of the other mosque attendees.
  
  The story proceeds to a convincing and bloody finale. With a wind up piece in 2000 as the 9/11 attacks unfold.
  
  In TripFiction terms The Cover Wife is an excellent location based thriller. Hamburg comes through sound and clear from the largely immigrant area by the central station (where the mosque in question is situated on the first floor of an unprepossessing building), to the quieter reaches of the Alster lake, to the industrial suburbs. Hamburg is a city I know reasonably well, and I felt very much at home.
  
  The Cover Wife is quite definitely recommended.
• 
  Bookreporter.com Mystery & Thriller

  The bulk of the action in THE COVER WIFE takes place in October 1999. This timeframe is important, and all will be revealed during the finale of this tense and perfectly paced novel.
  
  CIA agent Claire Saylor meets with one of her superiors to learn about her next mission. It turns out that she is being sent to Hamburg, Germany, to pose as the wife of a controversial professor and politico who has seriously angered the Muslim world with his depiction and interpretation of their sacred Quran. Also in Hamburg is Mahmoud, a young Muslim who is spending time at a place called Al Quds prior to attending a wedding. Slowly readers will come to realize that the group at Al Quds has a dangerous agenda of their own.
  
  As Claire settles into her role as the wife of outspoken academic Winston Armitage, she briefs him on her duties as part of his security force and needs to learn the landscape quickly to keep him safe. During this time, Winston is set to make several local appearances and lectures that will put him directly in the line of fire. She hears him speak with the press and denounce many of the Quran’s texts that are held sacred, including the prophecy of Muslims sacrificing themselves in the name of martyrdom and the hundreds of heavenly virgins who will be waiting for them on the other side.
  
  Ken Donlan, another special agent from the FBI, decides to settle into the same area for surveillance on Middle Easterners and their possible connections to Al-Qaeda. Even though they are on the same team, some of his actions will put Claire’s mission in jeopardy. The danger escalates in a sudden, violent incident that will leave Claire overwhelmed with fear by how close she could have come to dying.
  
  The book will culminate at the wedding of one of Mahmoud’s colleagues. Claire and Donlan both plan on surveilling the event, but they will not be the only international agency there. It is the last chapter, taking place on September 11, 2001, where the jaw-dropping connections of the players involved up to this point will come to light --- an absolutely stunning way to end this taut novel.
  
  THE COVER WIFE made such an impression on me that I want to seek out Dan Fesperman’s backlist. This is the thinking-man’s espionage book and the type of story you will have a difficult time not finishing in one sitting. Fesperman’s writing style does not overload you with data and acronyms, but makes you feel like you are there with the characters and experiencing each plot twist along with them. This brilliant read is not to be missed.
  
  Reviewed by Ray Palen
• 
  Herb

  Too real. Depressing and a little ham handed. yes bad guys succeed probably it seems these days more often than not but that’s not why I read thrillers. I like to believe that the good guys win even if their wins are small. This book’s style? cadence etc. could not be more different than his other book Safehouse which I really liked.
• 
  neela :)))

  Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read. Complete mindfuck. Absolutely boggled rn.
• 
  Ben

  “ The Cover Wife” was a rather slow -moving espionage thriller whose big “ reveal” was obvious from the early stages of the book.
  Claire Saylor, the primary character, is a CIA agent given the assignment of acting as “wife” while guarding an academic who has written a book critical of the Koran. Her job is to act as “ cover wife” , accompanying him to Hamburg, Germany where he will give a talk about his book in an academic forum. She is to keep close watch on him and his activities so that he is not killed by any local Islamists angry at his slurs of their holy book. So most of the book is about her babysitting him, while staying aware of any suspicious lurkers. The spy stuff here is not very exciting.
  
  The secondary plot thread is a group of young men, Islamic emigres , who are living in Hamburg. These men have dreams of glorious martyrdom. The book tips off everything when we are told early on that one of the young men is Mohammed Atta. So now the reader knows what is going on. But it never gets going. Most of the book’s focus here is on the character Mahmoud. Adrift and lonely in a foreign city, he joins a local mosque where, after a while, is accepted into a group the earnest jihadists mentioned above. When he is asked to kill a young woman , Mahmoud has a crisis: is he devout enough for jihad? An action is being plotted in the local mosque, but it is soon obvious that the infidel author is not their important target. The target is not in Germany.
  That is not a spoiler, because this soufflé never rises much. The cover wife was disappointing in that what could have been a routine protection assignment growing into a tense manhunt and confrontation just fizzles.
  Reader advisories: nothing offensive. Nothing interesting either.
• 
  Jill Elizabeth

  I like Dan Fesperman because I like traditional, old-school feeling spy novels - and that is usually what he writes. Or at least what I usually read of his. This one felt like half domestic thriller drama and half spy book - and unfortunately there was an overemphasis on the first of those descriptors, which is where the book lost me.
  
  Fesperman does a great job writing characters and espionage / international incident novels. He also does a fine job writing a more relationship-focused story, I just don't enjoy them as much. There was nothing wrong with this one - it just wasn't what I wanted it to be. Had I gone in not knowing his work, and looking forward to another full-blown spy story, I probably would have given it a much higher rating. As it is I had to net at 3 because it was a bit of a slog for me in a handful of places.
  
  Kudos to him on doing his own reading though, as he's a fantastic audio book narrator! His narration was literally the reason I was able to keep going... I found him to offer just the right blend of emphasis and more straightforward narration, in a way that I thought brought the characters to life and kept the story as interesting as possible.
• 
  Ali

  I feel like spy novels generally fall into two categories, although I'm not sure I can clearly articulate them. The first category is the
  John le Carré-style ones, that are about intrigue and who and what you can trust, and the second fall more in the category of
  Robert Ludlum, with car chases and testosterone and a much more clear sense of good guys and bad guys. That isn't to say there aren't great books that have some of both, but to me the focus is important.
  
  This book falls into the Ludlum category, and I'm not a huge fan. Also, what's up with the title? Total miss.
• 
  Susanne

  I understand that Dan Fesperman is very well-respected writer of espionage fiction. I'd never read any of his books; I have given it only two stars because, for me, the characters were all flat. I am wondering if this is just the style of this type of writing - just factual information moving the characters around Hamburg. It's not that there were no surprises - of course there were many but somehow they also fell flat. After I read Fesperman's comments at the end of the book - I wondered if the reason this didn't work for me is that he tried to use historically correct information along with the fiction. I may try another of his books. The title may be entirely misleading since the cover wife portion is very secondary.
• 
  René

  Almost gave it a 1 star but I did finish so I guess 2. So boring… it just went on and on and the plot kept changing but not in a sensical evolution more of a random event would take place and then the book changed without much of an explanation. I thought it would be fun cia spy type novel but really it was s lot of I guess setting the reader up for something and then very little actual thrill or exciting resolution. I wish I would’ve stopped reading halfway.
• 
  Stefan

  This is the second book of three (to date) that was released in the Claire Saylor series. This one covers part 3 of her story (set in 1999 and 2001 in Paris, Germany, Maryland, and Pennsylvania). This one is linear so it does not jump back and forth in the timelines.
  
  In this book, Claire is going undercover as the wife of Winston Armitage, a tenured professor who is about to embark on a book interview tour. Professor Armitage has been receiving serious death threats over the book he has written about a controversial translation of the Holy Quran. Claire’s job is to keep him safe at all costs.
  
  Claire is also given a side task to gather intel on a few of the Muslim men at the local mosque that may be a part of these death threats and maybe more.
  
  When a major security breach happens, all plans are thrown into chaos. Now Claire needs to think fast and do what she can to make sure everyone is safe… and who they say they are. There are a couple of characters from the first book that crop up in this one, which was also nice to see.
  
  I must admit I was not overly pleased with the first few chapters of the book. I found the plot to be much like a number of other books where Muslims were trying to assassinate somebody in the name of the Holy Quran or plotting some terrorist act. But once the plot twist was revealed, the story, for me anyways, became much more enjoyable.
  
  I believe there are only three books to Claire Saylor’s story, so I now need to track down the final book Winter Work and read it to complete the story.
• 
  Evelyn

  Uninspiring title for a surprisingly good book.
  
  This tightly written espionage thriller takes place over the course of about two weeks, from early to mid-October 1999. Set primarily in Hamburg, Germany, the plot follows a team of CIA operatives accompanying and protecting a Western scholar of Islam on a publicity tour for a book of his that negatively reinterprets and derogates the Koranic statement used by Muslim terrorists to assure true believers that in the next world, 72 virgins will be their reward for acts of suicidal carnage. Not surprising, this new interpretation causes a global sensation accompanied by death threats.
  
  But this odd, relatively straightforward mission rapidly spirals out of control as it grows more complex and takes on additional layers. The plot barrels along at a fast clip, delivering an array of twists and surprising turns that keep things endlessly interesting all the way to the end.
  
  As well, at its heart, though nothing like any of John le Carre's novels in the way it's written or plays out, Fesperman's book deals with a similar theme predominant in many of the British spy master's books--the deterioration of Western espionage organizations due to infighting, internal jockeying for position, the seeming lack of realistic strategies and the strong, competent leadership needed to keep it all in place.
• 
  Sam Sattler

  I've enjoyed several of Dan Fesperman's novels since reading his The Prisoner of Guantanamo back in 2007. The books appeal to me primarily because they always seem to be on topics ripped right from the headlines of tomorrow's newspaper. The Cover Wife, even though it is set in 1999 Germany, feels just as current because it deals with a problem that is as scary in 2024 as it was in 1999: fanatical, Islamist-influenced terrorism that could strike anywhere, anytime despite the world's quarter of a century of trying to control the threat.
  
  This is the story, much of it factually based, of exactly how close authorities in the U.S. and Germany came to nipping the 9-11 plot in the bud, even to being able to stop it before the terrorists ever reached the U.S. - and how authorities in both countries instead found a way to blow their one and only chance to get the job done.
  
  Claire Saylor is not exactly a team-player of a CIA agent. So when Claire is chosen to impersonate the wife of a German-book-touring American professor whose new book is certain to bring the wrath of Islam down on his head, she sees it as punishment for the trouble she caused on her last case. Claire, though, starts to feel a little better about the assignment when she learns that the team leader is a man she both respects and has a little history with. She is officially to be the nerdy professor's head of personal security, but that's not all Claire is going to be doing - especially after the whole operation almost immediately start falling apart all around her and her team.
  
  In alternating chapters, Fesperman focuses on a young Moroccan immigrant to Germany as he is groomed by a small group of radicals at his local mosque. The young man's skills and loyalty are tested and judged via small assignments he is given to complete on his own, and soon enough he becomes member of the team. The Moroccan, however, has a secret of his own: the protective feelings he has for the Westernized Muslim wife of another young man in the same group of conspirators.
  
  Claire recognizes that the new recruit may be a weak link the agency can exploit if she can only keep him alive long enough to do so. But that won't be easy because the FBI and German authorities are also aware of this particular group of Muslim radicals - and no one is sharing intelligence or operational planning with anyone else. Three agencies, three separate missions, and no one is willing to share details or responsibilities. And that goes for the CIA and the FBI, as well.
  
  Fesperman always handles a complicated plot very well, and The Cover Wife is no exception. In less capable hands, all of the inter-agency infighting, along with the numerous characters who come in and out of the story, may have made this a difficult plot to follow. The Cover Wife can certainly be read as a straight-up spy thriller, but readers paying a little extra attention will recognize that many of the characters and places are real ones snatched from what was learned in the aftermath of the 9-11 murders. If you don't already know Dan Fesperman's work, The Cover Wife and Safe Houses, the novel that precedes it, are good places to start reading.
• 
  Cheryl Sokoloff

  Claire’s last secret op (in #Beirut) was a bust. Now, the Agency is shipping her off to Hamburg, on “#security” detail for an American author’s much anticipated #book release. The book’s premise is that the where people now believe the #Quran promises 12 virgins to those who sacrifice their lives for Allah, this author claims the translation is actually 12 raisins. A claim sure to infuriate many … Claire was to pose as the author’s wife. In addition, her boss, Bridger, added some extra reconnaissance for her to cover … which Claire suspected, (and hoped), would prove more exciting than posing as the cover wife.
  
  This was my first time reading (and listening to) a Dan Fesperman novel. That being said, I had no trouble getting into this tale of international espionage, and, staying with it, right to the end. I do not want to give away any spoilers. This is definitely a great read … for the beach … or literally, for anytime, anywhere.
  
  Thank you #netgalley and @knopfdoubleday for the digital book and @dreamscape_media for the #audiobook, which is perfectly narrated by the author, #danfesperman.
  
  #5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #thecoverwife