For American spy John Wells, returning home after nearly a decade undercover is not going to be easy. Alex Berenson's debut novel, The Faithful Spy, reads as if torn from the pages of the New York Times, and has already been optioned for film. It's a zigzagging tale of espionage in a very real world, where the War on Terror has seeped into every facet of its characters' lives. An investigative reporter turned novelist, Berenson weaves a startlingly pertinent tale of terrorism, espionage and action in a post-9/11 world.

As the only Westerner to ever successfully infiltrate al Qaeda, CIA operative Wells finds himself being hand-selected by the mastermind behind all terrorist attacks in America to assist in the jihadi's next strike against the United States, a biochemical attack on American soil. Unfortunately for Wells, years of broken communication with his superiors, less than impressive intelligence and Wells' own conversion to Islam have left him with few friends to count on. Mistrust swirls about him, and those who would stand by him including the analyst responsible for his debriefing, Jennifer Exley walk that thin line separating loyalty from treason.

Berenson's extensive experience in field journalism lends substantial validity to the framework of the story, so that at times The Faithful Spy reads more like nonfiction than fiction. The novel delves into some very serious issues, including the seemingly insurmountable odds faced by agencies such as the FBI and CIA as they struggle to locate and disband terror cells within the United States. Berenson does not downplay the terrors of war, nor idly glaze over the violence it involves. Suspenseful, heartbreakingly poignant and thrilling all at once, this novel could stand as an archetype for modern espionage classics.

Travis Taylor writes from Detroit, Michigan.

Fans of Dan Brown's wildly popular novel The Da Vinci Code, and the myriad comparable books it spawned Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's The Rule of Four, Leslie Silbert's The Intelligencer, Lev Grossman's Codex, etc. will undoubtedly enjoy Matt Bondurant's debut novel, The Third Translation. Set in modern-day London, the story follows American Egyptologist Dr. Walter Rothschild in the last days of his contract with the British Museum to solve the riddle of the Stela of Paser, a funerary stone that is one of the last remaining cryptographic puzzles of the ancient world. The hieroglyphic artifact, which supposedly holds arcane knowledge of the dead and insights into the afterlife, contains enigmatic instructions stating that the writing must be translated three different ways to unlock its secrets.

As Rothschild comes closer to solving the ancient mystery, his already miserable personal life he's divorced, his adult daughter hates him and he shares a filthy attic apartment the size of a closet with an ill-tempered researcher obsessed with spicy foods and insecticides takes a dramatic turn for the worse. After meeting a controversial writer ( the next Salman Rushdie ) at a local pub, Rothschild overindulges in alcohol and narcotics and ends up taking a strange woman back to the museum. Later, he realizes she has used him to steal an invaluable artifact. Rothschild is told to reacquire it or else. Thus begins a hallucinatory quest through London's dark underbelly that involves drug dealers, pseudo-intellectual revolutionaries, bizarre cults and a professional wrestler named Gigantica.

While just as complex as Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Bondurant's debut is a more understated, intimate kind of thriller. A compelling amalgam of history, mysticism and suspense, The Third Translation is tantalizing brain candy highly recommended for history aficionados, conspiracy theorists and closet cryptographers alike.

Paul Goat Allen is a freelance editor and writer in Syracuse, New York.

Forget the title. There's no honeymoon chronicled in the latest fast-paced thriller from James Patterson. But there are plenty of lovemaking scenes of honeymoon intensity. At the center of each one is the gorgeous Nora Sinclair, who uses her body with the precision and deadliness of a sniper's rifle. Her day-to-day job is interior decoration, but her real profession is wooing and dispatching rich, handsome men and pillaging their estates. In so doing, she is constantly shuttling back and forth among her fashionable digs in Boston, Westchester and Manhattan. It's a good life, albeit one that bounces along on a trampoline of intricately woven lies and deceptions.

The qualities that humanize Nora are her circle of "Sex in the City"-like girlfriends and her devotion to her mother, who is stored away in an asylum and nursing her own dark secrets. Nora doesn't so much revel in evil as accept it as the cost of doing business.

Determined to call Nora to account for her misdeeds is FBI agent John O'Hara. (The authors have a bit of fun with literary allusions like this. One character gives another books by such crime-story competitors of Patterson as John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell and yet another passes the time reading Nelson DeMille.) Trouble is, O'Hara, who operates via a variety of guises and ruses, is as susceptible to Sinclair's charms as her earlier victims were. He also has old wounds to deal with, including a failed marriage and the reputation of being an organizational maverick. And he's working on another case as he's pursuing Nora, one that nearly gets him killed.

Unlike Patterson's more densely textured Alex Cross novels, Honeymoon has the quick-cut pacing and visual snap of a screenplay. The chapters really scenes seldom exceed four pages and generally end with a portentous declaration or a cliffhanger incident. The text twinkles with the brand names of tony consumer items, not surprising when dealing with a conspicuous high roller like Nora.

Honeymoon is the sixth novel Patterson has written with a co-author but his first one with Howard Roughan, whose solo works of fiction include the lavishly praised The Promise of a Lie and The Up and Comer. Because the focus is more on the observable scenery and action than on nuanced character development, the two authors' writing styles mesh quite well. The only dissonant factor is an occasional and unaccountable shift in point-of-view. Sometimes O'Hara's character is presented in third person, sometimes in first.

Speaking to BookPage in 2003, just before the release of his historical novel, The Jester (written with Andrew Gross), Patterson joked that he picked his co-authors out of the phone book. Then, on a more serious note, he continued, "I'm looking for somebody who, I think, can bring good things to the party, somebody I can get along with." To date, he has written three novels with Gross and several with other co-writers. "I don't really get into the process [of how I co-write]," he said, "because every time I sort of lay out what I do, the next thing you know, somebody else is doing the same thing." More significant than his method of writing, Patterson asserted, is the variety and appeal of his novels. "I think one of the most interesting things is the diversity of these books and the fact that on a pure readership level, a pure, spellbinding, can't-put-it-down level, that they're pretty successful. Forget about sales. They just move along real well."

Honeymoon does indeed move along "real well," accelerated by a handful of strong supporting characters. Among these are O'Hara's sympathetic and no-nonsense boss, Susan (whose relationship with him turns out to be a bit more complex than manager-employee); Nora's deceptively cunning mother; and a mysterious blonde woman who shadows Nora right through to the novel's unexpected conclusion. Maybe it's a bit early to talk about "beach reading," but Honeymoon should be perfect for the sands of summer if not the sands of time.