WALL, THE by John Marks - BOOK - ADVANCE READING COPY

When was the last time you read a thriller with half a dozen major characters, all of whom you could believe in? John Marks pulls off this amazing trick in his first novel--and also manages to capture perfectly the heady mixture of hope and fear surrounding the collapse of the East German government in 1989. Captain Nester Cates, a 35-year-old African American intellectual and former radical who is now working for U.S. Army Intelligence is not the most popular man in West Berlin. Ridiculed by his military colleagues for his interest in obscure concepts such as democracy and German culture, Cates befriends another Army outcast named Stuart Glemnick--a complex, weak man with a shadowy past in the Middle East. Glemnick quickly gets Nester and several other key characters (including Glemnick's brother, a conflicted entomologist who sees everything in terms of bugs) into serious trouble by defecting to the East just a few hours before the Berlin Wall comes down. The cast also includes a wonderfully gutsy, naive young American journalist who stumbles into a career-making situation, and one of the scariest CIA spooks ever--Carlton Styles, who lost much of his face and mind to a terrorist bomber. Carlton is now convinced that the man who disfigured him is masquerading as the bug expert. Author Marks covered Eastern Europe for U.S. News & World Report, and scenes like the attack on demonstrators in Prague vibrate with authenticity that could only come from firsthand experience with Iron Curtain culture.