The Last Man in Tehran
A Novel
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4.3 • 75 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Decorated current CIA analyst Mark Henshaw continues the “authentic, compelling, and revealing” (Jason Matthews) Red Cell series following agent Kyra Stryker who must work to save the CIA from being torn apart by a mole at the highest echelons, with the help of recently retired analyst, Jonathan Burke.
When a dirty bomb goes off in an Israeli port, Israel’s feared intelligence service—the Mossad—unleashes their most deadly assassins across the globe. They suspect that Iran supplied the radioactive material used in the attack, and Israel will protect the homeland by any means necessary.
Meanwhile at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Kyra Stryker is just settling in to her new position: chief of the Red Cell, the CIA’s special ops think tank. Soon after the attack on Israel, the CIA discovers evidence that a mole in Langley is helping Mossad wage its covert war. The FBI launches a counterintelligence investigation led by an ambitious special agent, who quickly identifies a suspect.
Not convinced that the FBI has the right man, Stryker asks for help from her former mentors—now-retired Red Cell Chief Jonathan Burke and his wife, former CIA Director Kathryn Cooke—to protect the convenient scapegoat, find the truth, and convince Mossad to stop its assassination campaign before a world war overtakes the Middle East. Kyra’s campaign takes her to Iran, where she uncovers kidnapping, torture, back-channel diplomacy, and an illegal op, but also finds help from the most unlikely source she could imagine.
“[A] taut plot” (Publishers Weekly), The Last Man in Tehran is a deeply satisfying, fascinating and thrilling novel by a real-life CIA analyst.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Henshaw's improbable fourth espionage thriller featuring the CIA's Red Cell unit (after 2016's The Fall of Moscow Station), Kyra Stryker has just become Red Cell's chief when the detonation of a dirty bomb in Haifa causes massive casualties. A month later, Kyra's mentor Kathryn Cooke, former head of the CIA, learns that Majid Salehi is the head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Then the Israelis aim to eliminate Majid and other Iranians in London who are participating in talks with the U.S. about Iran's nuclear weapons program; someone within the CIA must have leaked the information to the Mossad. Cooke's successor orders a mole hunt. The clues that Red Cell leader Kyra Stryker uses to identify the mole strain credulity, undermining a taut plot in which she and her allies race to avert a wider conflict. Hopefully, Henshaw will do better next time.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
Tight plot line. Keeps you engaged until the end through many twists and turns.
Basic and silly
The plot is full of shamelessly biased positions. Eg the Iran hostage crisis, where no one died, was a war worthy transgression that brings a CIA agent to near meltdown when near the site. But American support or a fascist Shah, after overthrowing an Iranian democracy, barely garners a “meh.” Eg2 the Israeli policy of assassination is not just righteous—the bloodier, the better. This author defines self defense for Israel in a highly permissible, preemptive way, but for the dark Muslim bad guys there’s no such thing. Cities like Tehran are drab nightmares without a single tree (lol!), while Tel Aviv is heaven on earth.
For children, or chuck Norris fans, the lack of nuance here is pleasing fodder for simplistic world views. If that’s your kind of world, you’ll enjoy the ridiculous plot and history.