An NSA analyst spots a suspicious cor­re­la­tion between the NSA station chief in Ankara and a crusading journalist, and she reports it to the director of the NSA. The station chief promptly dies in a car crash and the journalist is abducted by Syrian terrorists, and she starts to worry. As the ever-more au­thor­i­tar­i­an director goes further off the deep end, her worry grows—with good reason. And the director’s hatchet man who is assigned to monitor her un­ex­pect­ed­ly turns out to have human feelings.

This is a classic paranoid spy thriller, rooted in reality (there are dozens of endnotes to assure you of this). The director’s paranoia and hubris is over the top, but most of the other characters seem plausible, as does much of the sur­veil­lance technology. Eisler clearly intends this to be a wake-up call for the post-Snowden world.