The Warlord's Son

Apr 25, 2025 3:24 PM

Author:Dan Fesperman,Jeff Harding

The Warlord's Son

'The sun did not rise in Peshawar. It seeped - an egg-white smear that brightened the eastern horizon behind a veil of smoke, exhaust and dust. The smoke rose from burning wood, cow dung and old tires, meager flames of commerce for kebab shops and bakers, metal-smiths and brick kilns. The exhaust sputtered from buzzing blue swarms of motor rickshaws, three-wheeled terrors that jolted across potholes, darting between buses like juiced-up golf carts.'

Into this smoky chaos of sprawling humanity comes Skelly, a burned-out American war correspondent, now in harness again thanks to a messy divorce and too many children. Post nine-eleven, he's back in the game, in yet another new and extremely hazardous location, dropped from the skies after scarcely as much preparation as one might make for a weekend at the beach.

But first he must find a 'fixer'; someone local yet who speaks English, who's good on the ground, yet can arrange transport; a man who is essential to keeping one alive and safe, yet knows where the action is. And, for every war correspondent in Peshawar, where the action is, is across the border in the mountain strongholds of Afghanistan.

Soon Skelly and his fixer, Najeeb, are driving dusty roads north, in the wake of Mahmood Abdul Khan - ex-Mujahadeen, ex-Taliban, currently good friend of the Allied forces. For Skelly has been promised the scoop of a lifetime, the sort that will allow him to write his own ticket back to the States. He and Najeeb are on the trail of the tribal leader whom every American is after, the biggest fish of them all . . .

Reviews

'A new book by Dan Fesperman is becoming a major literary event ... Fesperman's experience as a war correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterisation, produce an utterly compelling thriller and quite simply the best book I've read all year'

—— Susanna Yager , Sunday Telegraph

'Almost alone in depicting the main theatre of war on terror, Fesperman proves equal to the challenge, producing impressive portraits of Peshawar and the mountainous borderlands'

—— Sunday Times

'A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in the shadow of the Khyber Pass... Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also a gifted novelist...'The Warlord's Son' deserves the attention of anyone who is open to first-rate fiction about war, journalism and the dark, dangerous worlds called Pakistan and Afghanistan'

—— The Washington Post

'Fesperman offers a level of cultural and political nuance not always found in adventure thrillers'

—— Booklist

'...a gripping portrayal of shameless media frenzy and hopeless geopolitical gamesmanship... his detailed insider's account of war reporting will be catnip for news junkies'

—— Publishers Weekly

'...bleak and gritty, but thoroughly believable'

—— Kirkus Review

'A first-rate geopolitical yarn... Fesperman combines his strong eye for detail with bleak film-noir cynicism'

—— Entertainment Weekly

'The violence level is high, and rendered so convincingly that at times I felt queasy. Fortunately for introspective readers, the violence is leavened by searing insights into human nature... I knew I could not sleep until finishing it'

—— The Baltimore Sun

'...a convincing, accurate thriller...this book is worth reading if only for the passage where the hero, Skelly, glimpses Osama Bin Laden at a public hanging; the scene both convinces and frightens'

—— The Economist

Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It's what fires off the movie projector in the reader's mind.

—— MICHAEL CONNELLY

Patterson knows where our deepest fears are buried... there's no stopping his imagination.

—— NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Patterson is in a class by himself.

—— VANITY FAIR

[Patterson's] books don't pussyfoot around when it comes to the villains. These are bad, bad people ... with a lot of intrigue in high places.

—— AL ROKER, The Today Show

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