About the Book: Silicon Valley: the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. Istanbul: a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he’ll be the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, California’s nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

Alex Treven has sacrificed everything to achieve his sole ambition: making partner in his high-tech law firm. But then the inventor of a technology Alex is banking on is murdered, the patent examiner who reviewed the innovation dies–and Alex himself narrowly escapes an attack in his own home. Off balance, out of ideas, and running out of time, he knows that the one person who can help him is the last person he’d ever ask: his brother.

Ben Treven is a military liaison element, an elite undercover soldier paid to “find, fix, and finish” high-value targets in the United States global war on terror.

Disenchanted with what he sees as America’s culture of denial and decadence, Ben lives his detached life in the shadows because the black ops world is all he really knows–and because other than Alex, whom he hasn’t spoken to since their mother died, his family is long gone.

But blood is thicker than water, and when Ben receives Alex’s frantic call he hurries to San Francisco to help him. Only then does Alex reveal that there’s another player who knows of the technology: Sarah Hosseini, a young Iranian American lawyer whom Alex has long secretly desired–and whom Ben immediately distrusts. As these three struggle to identify the forces attempting to silence them, Ben and Alex are forced to examine the events that drove them apart–even as Sarah’s presence, and her own secret yearnings, deepens the fault line between them.

My Review: This is my first novel by Barry Eisler, but he has a pretty extensive backlist. This book is a classic thriller and quite the pageturner. In this novel, Eisler brings together two brothers with very different lifestyles to fight an enemy. Alex is the “good” brother. He became a lawyer and is hoping to make a significant career leap by bringing a new security program to his firm. The day they are supposed to present the program, however the inventor disappears.

Ben is his brother who enlisted in the military and is an assassin. Alex turns to him for help when he fears his own life is in danger.

While the thriller part of this story is interesting, the more interesting part of the book to me was the conflict between the two brothers as they both grapple with the life decisions they’ve made. There are quick examinations of politics and how far is too far, and how everyone sleeps at night.

A quick read, but not without some interesting explorations. Please note there is some profanity and sexually explicit scenes.

I received this book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, but the book will be available to all on March 10, 2009.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 12:00 am

This post was written by and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.