Amazon Exclusive: Alex Berenson Talks About His New Novel, The
Midnight House
As a reporter for The New York Times, Alex Berenson has covered
topics ranging from the occupation of Iraq to the flooding of New
Orleans to the financial crimes of Bernie Madoff. His previous
novels include The Faithful , winner of the 2007 Edgar Award
for best first novel, The Ghost War, and The Silent Man.
John Wells has been through a lot.
Over the course of his first three missions—chronicled in The
Faithful , The Ghost War, and The Silent Man —he’s been .
Twice. He’s been beaten nearly to death in a prison in Beijing.
He’s fought hand-to-hand against Russian special forces soldiers
in a cave in Afghanistan. He’s repelled an assassination attempt
in a traffic jam in Washington.
And, of course, there was that time he was infected with the
plague.
Just writing this list makes me wince a little bit, too. You
see, John is real to me—and, based on the e-mail I receive, to
lots of readers, too. Unlike a typical action hero, he’s not a
human Etch-a-Sketch. He can’t shake himself clean, forget
everything he’s seen and done, and wake up ready for his next
mission. He has nightmares and fits of depression. Yet he will
never give up his roles as protector and—unique to
Wells—infiltrator, each of which brings with it specific and
intense psychological stresses, and so he has no choice but to
soldier on.
Put simply, Wells, like many veterans, has posttraumatic stress
disorder. The syndrome has gone by different names over the
years: “shell shock,” “the thousand-yard stare,” “combat
igue.” Most soldiers don’t like talking about it, especially
to civilians. And with the help of their families and fellow
soldiers, the great majority eventually find a way to put their
experiences behind them. But some suffer terribly. The number of
suicides in the Army has more than doubled since the Iraq war
began, rising from 67 in 2003 to at least 150 in 2009.
So in writing my fourth novel, The Midnight House, I wanted to
respect the real-world impact that war has on the men and women
who fight it. I hear from soldiers and veterans who read these
novels, and who see themselves in Wells. I would hate to betray
them by turning him into a comic-book character. And I am very
conscious of the trauma Wells has accumulated, both physical and
psychic. It’s just not realistic to bring him to the edge of
death over and over and expect him to survive. I also wanted to
give him a break from killing, to the extent I could. Not that
he’s become a pacifist; far from it. But, without giving too much
away, he is a detective as much as a soldier in this book, and he
tries to avoid using force whenever he can. (In The Silent Man in
contrast, he deliberately seeks out revenge even when Jennifer
Exley, his then fiancée, asks him not to.)
Don’t worry, though. From start to finish, The Midnight House
has plenty of excitement, and the early reviews have been great.
Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a superbly crafted thriller
that doubles as a gripping mystery,” and Publishers Weekly said
it is “exceptional” and “compelling.” I hope you’ll agree. And I
hope that when you’re done reading, you’ll remember that although
John Wells is only as real as the pages (or screens) of these
novels, the valor and sacrifice that he represents is alive every
day in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in the homes of soldiers and
veterans across America.
--Alex Berenson
(Photo of Alex Berenson © Sigrid Estrada)