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Gitmo.
The word conjures up razor wire, chain link fences and suspected terrorists in orange jump suits, hoods covering their heads.
And now the controversial detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay is the setting for The Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman. It's a superb spy thriller worthy of sharing shelf space with the novels of John le Carre and Ken Follett.
Fesperman, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun who visited Guantanamo in 2003, centers his novel on the death of U.S. Sgt. Earl Ludwig, whose uniform- and boot-clad body is found on a beach -- but on the Cuban side of the fence that separates the naval base from the rest of Fidel Castro's island country.
The political storm churned up by the incident nearly overshadows the drowning as FBI agent Revere Falk, who is an interrogator at the camp, struggles to figure out how Ludwig died and how he ended up where he did.
Falk is the classic flawed hero. He's emotionally stunted by a loveless childhood and a mistake he made as a young Marine that still haunts him.
His ability to befriend and gain the trust of suspected military combatants is in stark contrast to his inability to re-establish a relationship with his estranged father or commit to a future with a woman who loves him.
Falk isn't blind to the humanity of Gitmo's prisoners, and he risks his own life and career to protect Adnan al-Hamdi, 19, a Yemeni detainee he has been interrogating for months. Al-Hamdi may unknowingly hold a clue to Ludwig's death, and he may not live long enough to share it.
The mystery at the heart of The Prisoner of Guantanamo is solid and darkly imaginative, but it's the nitty-gritty details about the conspiratorial atmosphere at Guantanamo that gives the novel its heft.
Fesperman conjures up the island's blistering heat and the competitive antagonism stirred up by the proximity of members of the military, the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. He draws a dramatic portrait of Gitmo's typical soldiers, male and female, stationed cheek-to-jowl with prisoners of war in the midst of communist Cuba.
Most poignantly, Fesperman offers a glimpse into what life must be like for the prisoners of Guantanamo who rightly, or wrongly, are imprisoned there.
Fesperman's prisoners are fictitious, but he paints their portrayal with the details that have been reported of their real-life counterparts' experiences. In The Prisoner of Guantanamo, interrogations are conducted with the help of chains, ropes, bright lights, blaring music and solitary confinement.
The author's objective eye lets readers decide whether the treatment of detainees, as he describes it in his novel, is morally justified or altogether reprehensible.
The Prisoner of Guantanamo
By Dan Fesperman
Knopf, 323 pp., $24
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