by Fred Burton
First published 2018
On April 18, 1983, a massive truck bomb destroys the American embassy in Lebanon, killing sixty-three people and shattering CIA intelligence networks across the Middle East. William Buckley arrives in war-torn Beirut as the new station chief, tasked with rebuilding operations from scratch. He works the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, cultivating sources and managing assets in a landscape of constant violence. When terrorists bomb a Marine barracks on October 23, President Reagan promises retaliation. But the mastermind behind the attack, young terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, sets his sights on a new prize: Buckley himself. The CIA officer's subsequent kidnapping, torture, and murder by Hezbollah operatives sparks an American war on terror that reshapes Middle Eastern politics for decades. Burton draws on classified government documents and interviews with Buckley's colleagues, friends, and family to reconstruct this pivotal moment when personal tragedy became geopolitical transformation.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, crime, action, biography-memoir, 21st-century, espionage, american-history
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: based-on-true-events, geopolitical-transformation, personal-tragedy
Setting: Beirut, Lebanon, Middle East
Period: 1983
400 pages · Hardcover · NAL
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, kidnapping, torture