In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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The sun did not rise in Peshawar. It seeped – an egg-white smear that brightened the eastern horizon behind a veil of smoke, exhaust and dust. The smoke rose from burning wood, cow dung and old tires, meager flames of commerce for kebab shops and bakers, metal-smiths and brick kilns. The exhaust sputtered from buzzing blue swarms of motor rickshaws, three-wheeled terrors that jolted across potholes, darting between buses like juiced-up golf carts.’ Into this smoky chaos of sprawling humanity comes Skelly, a burned-out American war correspondent, now in harness again thanks to a messy divorce and too many children. Post nine-eleven, he’s back in the game, in yet another new and extremely hazardous location, dropped from the skies after scarcely as much preparation as one might make for a weekend at the beach. But first he must find a ‘fixer’; someone local yet speaks English, who’s good on the ground, yet can arrange transport; a man who is essential to keeping one alive and safe, yet knows where the action is. And, for every war correspondent in Peshawar, where the action is, is across the border in the mountain strongholds of Afghanistan. Soon Skelly and his fixer, Najeeb, are driving dusty roads north, in the wake of Mahmood Abdul Khan – ex-Mujahadeen, ex-Tallban, currently a good friend of the Allied forces. For Skelly has been promised the scoop of a lifetime, the sort that will allow him to write his own ticket back to the States. He and Najeeb are on the trail of the tribal leader whom every American is after, the biggest fish of them all…

Review: I rather enjoyed this book. For someone who knew nothing of the challenges we face in this part of the world, it was really useful and insightful to understand some of the background. Added to that the writer provides a compelling story which is well paced, although slow at times for a reason. The backstabbing and intrigue of the various warlords and their tribes adds insight into the huge challenges that all invading nations found trying to impose themselves. I found it fascinating, even though there needs to appreciate that it is a story, and not necessarily all true. A good read.

Dan Fesperman (born September 15, 1955, in Charlotte, North Carolina) is a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and the author of several thrillers. The plots were inspired by the author’s own international assignments in Germany, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. He is a 1977 graduate of the University of North Carolina and lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife Liz Bowie, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and their two children.