Twelve Days

Twelve Days is the second part of the two-part John Wells story that began with The Counterfeit Agent and it offers a thrilling conclusion to the story. Twelve Days is literally a ticking clock story. The president has given Iran an ultimatum and will go to war in 12 days, which is how much time John Wells has to prove that the United States is being baited into war against Iran by a third party.

John Wells has always been a bit of an outsider character, but he has never been on his own more than he has in this book. The administration is committed to war if its demands are not met and is not willing to believe that it has been duped. Ousted former CIA director and current Senator Duto doesn’t have the resources and authority he show more formerly had and eventually burns whatever bridges with the administration he has left. Ellis Schafer is still inside the CIA but is increasingly marginalized by new leadership and is eventually fighting for his freedom if not his life.

Duto and Schafer, still one of the best odd-couple, angel/devil on the shoulder pairings in literature, are able to provide Wells some assistance, but he is left largely to his own devices and has to cash in every chit he has acquired over the years. Twelve Days once again takes John Wells all over the world from England to Russia to Israel, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. The fights, chases, and conflicts are the equal of any contemporary thriller writers, but there is an added sense of realism, both physical and moral, to an aging hero whose physical limitations not only affect strategy, but linger in a realistic way. While not disabling, they force adjustments which deepen the respect for John Wells.

Alex Berenson also has a unique skill for creating realistic set pieces that illustrate the heightening tensions in the main plot. From a missile strike on a commercial airliner to a drone strike against terror leaders, he creates characters and scenarios that are realistic, exciting and crucial to raising the stakes of the story.

Reading the series in order is not necessary, although helpful in seeing the growth of the main characters and their relationship to one another. Twelve Days could technically be read alone as the backstory is recapped, but is better read together with the previous book, The Counterfeit Agent, which begins the events which conclude in this book.

Berenson continues at the top of his game with John Wells Twelve Days that is sure to please long-time fans and hopefully bring new ones to this great thriller series.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book. show less

I've been a big fan of the John Wells series since the beginning, and I think the author has done an admirable job in 'maturing' the character. Twelve Days is a nice addition to the catalog but it has more weaknesses than I've seen in previous books. It's still very well written, but I had a little trouble in how the perspective of the narration changed throughout the book. It seemed that you'd made progress and understood the flow of the story, but the next chapter or the one after that may roll it back and tell it with a different character's voice. I've experienced that technique many times and it usually adds context to the story line, but in this case it didn't provide much value.

The action is fast-paced, that's for sure. Wells is show more at it again doing what he does best, but this time he's way under the radar and has a deadline to meet to, as usual, save the world (or a part of the world, anyway). The writing is propulsive, the dialogue is decent, but the story was weak in a couple areas, specifically in the Russian sequence and in the ending confrontation (trying not to play spoiler here....). Both seemed to stretch believability a little too far, one situation relying on luck and the other with a failure to anticipate scenarios leading to a potentially rough outcome.

Anyway, this is an action-packed John Wells novel that will satisfy your Berenson fiction craving. It's not his best and, in my opinion, the Wells character is getting a little long in the tooth. However, it's a good read and any Wells story is better than none at all! show less

Book 9 in the John Wells series, but more importantly the sequel to The Counterfeit Agent. A multi-billionaire continues to manipulate events and evidence to incite the US to attack Iran to preclude their efforts to develop nuclear weapons. After a solid beginning, the book spends too much time reviewing what happened in the other book, but as the 12 day timeline ticks down to zero, the action accelerates and Ellis Schafer, Vinny Duto and John have to gamble to find the evidence to avoid an invasion of Iran. These guys manage to pull in favors from Israelis and Saudis alike. Enjoyable. The billionaire's cut-out Salome is a solid element in the story: self assured, clever, manipulative, and strong of spirit.

Book #9, in the John Wells series

After book # 8, I needed to take a long break from this series in fact it has been over 4 ½ years since I read “The Counterfeit”, why did I wait so long to get to “Twelve Days” ….I really had enough with problems between the US and Iran, this series was getting stale to me….I finally had to put it on my read shelf once and for all so here I am with my thoughts…..

“Twelve Days”, starts where the prequel left us. If you pick up this series here, no worries, there is a lot of information dumps for the new readers to catch up, although I recommend you read the previous installments first. This series is built around John Wells, an American intelligence operative and the main focus is a show more countdown to battle between the US and Iran.

It opens with a bag. A shoulder –fired rocket brings down a passenger jet. Iran is suspected to be behind this tragedy. The fictional US president has then decided that Iran has a bomb and has ordered strikes against the country, given 12 days to come clean…but Iran doesn’t really have the bomb…. So what then… our super-human goes through a series of adventures and misadventures to save the day and at times he does entertain us.

Unfortunately, this story tends to meander way too much. A good part is essentially recaps of the previous books. It seems the author was struggling to fill the pages to give us the action we came to expect. Wells is all over the place he jumps from the Middle East, to Russia, to South Africa and to the US while battling his own government which is convinced the evidence against Iran is solid. What a conspiracy theory….12 days countdown till the last hour… can this scenario be possible? No it sounds unrealistic/unbelievable for a government to do this….or could this happen someday….or could a third party as suggested in this plot be behind this kind of conspiracy…..

I had a hard time staying with this book. It took way to long, not until half way through before the author gets going from there finally the story picks up and the plot has some spring into it. Most action scenes are bland some are captivating but nothing original comes out and things drags on and on and on…..finally Wells save the day and the world is a better place for it….haha show less

Forces are attempting to pit the United States against Iran and start a war before Iran can get their nuclear weapons ready to use.

The first strike is the shooting down of a U.S. airplane as it departs from India. The President gives Iran twelve days to give up their nuclear program and allow inspectors in to see the proof or war will begin.

John Wells and his two associates, Vinny Duto and Ellis Shafer travel the world in attempt to find where a nuclear weapon might be stored and to stop the bloodshed.

The President's advisors have left him in a position that he's committed in so there is little Wells can do but he tries and tries again.

Wells is terrific in his role of an underdog and he's easy to like. The writing is brisk and action show more galore as we follow events from Wells point of view as well as the antagonists.

I enjoyed the story and have enjoyed Wells as a character but feel that this is much the same old story with new settings.

For Berenson fans, I'm sure they will like this book and for myself, I'll look forward to the next installment. show less

I picked up this book because it sounded right up my reading alley. Which it would have been but I found it a struggle to get into. I got through one and a half chapters before I put the book down. I could not remember anything that I had just read. I decided to try the book again because of the other readers rave reviews about the book. Yet I again quickly found myself bored. There was a lot of dialect happening in the book. Not a lot of action. Which it seems it is more about the intelligent then the action. Which I thought would pick up when John made his appearance but the story just stayed slow and steady. Not a bad thing but just not what I was after when I picked up this book. I found myself more skimming through it than actually show more reading it and gave up about six chapters in. show less

I knew this would be a difficult read for me as early as page 17, when the author, for whatever reasons are his own, decided to have the main character, an American, be a convert muslim.

For me this did not fit right from the jump. It is my observation that islam is the antithesis of a Constitutional Republic, they can never coexist, as they are diametric opposites.

Many would respond to that observation by saying it is only the small minority of muslims who are radical, I disagree!(actually, radical is a misnomer, they are really "fundamentalists"). There is an apt description of muslims in my view: "A radical (fundamentalist) muslim will chop off your head if you are an infidel, the moderate muslim will hold your feet while he does show more it". Additionally, the question remains hanging fire as it has for many, many years: when will the so-called moderate muslims in America, and elsewhere, start protesting the atrocities of the fundamentalists? Where have they been hiding, and continuing to hide all these years?

Accordingly, having the protagonist cast as a muslim convert, fighting diligently to keep America safe does not fit, and this shaded my entire reading of Berenson's book. It just does not work.

I realize this is only a book. My statements are only my review, and I think Berenson's depiction of Wells as a muslim was wholly gratuitous. It turned me off his book and turned me off on venturing into reading anything else he has written or might write. Reading "Twelve Days" was akin to having someone throw a wet blanket on you and tell you to enjoy the story from underneath it... show less