Beloved Enemy is Eric Van Lustbader’s fifth thriller of his Jack McClure series.
In the thrilling follow up to Father Night, McClure faces a choice - either help the woman he loves, or destroy her as his enemy.
Shortly after McClure leaves a late night meeting with Dennis Paull, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Paull is found shot dead in his home. The President is both angry and anxious of a scandal, since Jack McClure is one of their own, an operative and Paull's friend.
With top officials in the CIA and FBI after him, McClure, who is still devastated over his friend’s death, goes into hiding. Apparently, someone has framed him for Paull's murder, possibly to prevent him from accomplishing Paull's last request - to find the mole in the government.
McClure manages to escape the US under cover and travels to Bangkok and Switzerland to find the one person he thinks can identify the mole and clear him of the murder. Unfortunately for McClure, the individual he is chasing is close to Iraj Namazi, aka The Syrian, a ruthless terrorist who McClure has crossed paths with in a previous novel. This also leads McClure to Anna Dementeva, his former lover who betrayed him to be with Namazi. Along the way McClure must deal with Namazi’s organisation, Anna and a brutal killer called Redbird who has been assigned by a top US official to kill him.
On a quest to find the mole before secret agents around the world are exposed and murdered, McClure will soon find himself facing his own beloved enemy.
One interesting point to note in this novel is the mistrust and infighting that exists among the President’s men at the FBI, the CIA, the Military and the Department of Homeland Security. And these men actually implicate each other in front of the President. The other part of the story revolves around Anna’s late grandfather’s fortune where Anna, Namazi and a third individual all have parts of a code they think will lead to the fortune and more importantly, key contacts from his corrupt empire.
Van Lustbader provides enough information from prior novels to allow the current novel to stand on its own. However, as he adds new installments it becomes more difficult to follow the storyline without reading the previous novels.
An action packed political thriller with plenty of sex, murder, lies, deceit and intrigue, Beloved Enemy will definitely appeal to Eric Van Lustbader’s fans.