Cover image of "The Cover Wife," a novel about fanatic jihadists planning an attack

Claire Saylor is doing time in Langley hoping for a new field posting. But she hasn’t bargained on the assignment that’s just come her way. “You’re due for congratulations,” her boss says. “You’re to be married. Effective immediately. Care to see the lucky husband?” Who turns out to be an academic scheduled for a speaking tour of Europe. “A scholar of languages. Aramaic and Arabic, particularly with regard to translations of the Holy Quran. He’s married, but we wouldn’t want to risk his real wife . . . so you’re to be her stand-in.” And risk there is. Winston Armitage’s new book asserts that a Muslim’s award in Paradise is not virgins at all. Instead it’s seventy-two white raisins. And this will not go down well with fanatic jihadists. So Claire is to accompany Armitage as his bodyguard. They’re going to Hamburg to launch the book.

A combustible setting that nurtures radical Muslims

With this set-up, Dan Fesperman jumps into The Cover Wife. It’s the 11th of the 14 spy novels he’s published since 1999. Like others I’ve read and reviewed, the book is a tightly plotted, fast-moving story. It pits the CIA against its enemies in the fraught circumstances of a dangerous new century. And compared to the United States, where Muslim extremists have not found the conditions to flourish, the cities of Europe are fertile breeding grounds for anti-Western violence. There, in Hamburg for instance, young men from the Middle East come to study have found their way to mosques led by some of the faith’s most radical clerics. The result is predictably combustible. As Claire Saylor and Winston Armitage will soon discover.

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman (2021) 310 pages ★★★★★

Photo of residential neighborhood in Hamburg like the one where fanatic jihadists are planning an attack
A leafy residential neighborhood in Hamburg like those where the action in this novel takes place. Image: City-Wohnen

Competing intelligence services

The dominant theme in The Cover Wife is the dangerous rivalry among and within America’s, and the West’s, competitive intelligence services. And the story is set in 1999, two years before 9/11, which began to change that. In Fesperman’s story, we witness clashing operations by the FBI, Germany’s BND, the Hamburg police, and two competing factions within the CIA. They fail to share vital intelligence. They stumble into one another’s way in the field. And some actively try to undermine others among the players. The upshot is that the radical Islamist cell they’re all tracking manages to fly under their radar for much of the time.

Throughout the novel, Claire Saylor remains at the heart of the action. But we also follow closely an FBI agent sent to investigate the CIA and the members of the jihadist cell. The effect is to give us a well-rounded picture of a high-profile CIA operation as it unfolds.

An AI’s summary of the novel

As I often do, I turned to my artificial intelligence friend, Claude-AI (now version Sonnet 4.5), to summarize this novel. Knowing, as I’ve long since learned, that Claude can do so with nary an error or “hallucination.” With one major exception, what follows is verbatim, except that I’ve deleted the URLs to Claude’s sources and added subheads to make the text easier to access. The exception: I’ve also buried a major spoiler.

Set in 1999 Hamburg, Germany, The Cover Wife follows CIA agent Claire Saylor, who is sent undercover to pose as the wife of Professor Winston Armitage, an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran. His book argues that martyrs are promised 72 white raisins rather than 72 virgins—a claim that has enraged radical Muslims. Initially, Claire believes the assignment is punishment for her past unorthodox behavior. However, when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another Agency maverick, she realizes there’s more to this mission than protecting a provocative professor.

Radical Muslims congregate in Hamburg

Meanwhile, across Hamburg, Mahmoud, a young Moroccan émigré, falls under the influence of radical Islamists at his local mosque. The group’s leader . . . has significant plans for Mahmoud. However, the recruit must first prove himself by dealing with Esma, a Westernized Muslim woman who threatens to interfere with plans to send her husband on a suicide mission. Mahmoud becomes instantly smitten with Esma, leaving him torn between his radical associates and his growing feelings for her.

As Claire investigates, she discovers she’s actually there to [track the movements of a radical Muslim cell in Hamburg that threatens to cause havoc in the Middle East]. When things don’t go according to plan, Claire goes rogue, defying her own agency. Complicating matters, FBI agent Ken Donlan arrives in the same area to conduct surveillance on Middle Easterners with possible Al-Qaeda connections, and his actions jeopardize Claire’s mission.

The action climaxes at a wedding

The narrative builds toward a wedding celebration of one of Mahmoud’s colleagues, where Claire and other international agents plan to surveil the event. The novel culminates in a final chapter [in which Fesperman reveals the stunning connections between all the players].

Fesperman weaves his fictional characters seamlessly into historical events, exploring themes of systemic failure within intelligence agencies and the human cost of bureaucratic turf battles. The novel serves as both a tense espionage thriller and a haunting examination of the missed opportunities [in the so-called War on Terror].

About the author

Photo of Dan Fesperman, author of this novel about fanatic jihadists planning an attack
Dan Fesperman. Image: Wikipedia

Dan Fesperman is the author of 14 spy thrillers to date. As Wikipedia notes, “The plots were inspired by the author’s own international assignments [as a reporter] in Germany, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.” He was for many years a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He is a 1977 graduate of the University of North Carolina and lives in Baltimore, with his wife, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and their two children.

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