Former CIA operative Robert Baer pushes fiction to the absolute limit in this riveting and unnervingly plausible alternative history of 9/11.<br><br>Veteran CIA officer Max Waller has long been obsessed with the abduction and murder of his Agency mentor. Though years of digging yield the name of a suspect&#8212;an Iranian math genius turned terrorist&#8212;the trail seems too cold to justify further effort. Then Max turns up a photograph of the man standing alongside Osama bin Laden and a mysterious westerner whose face has been cut out, feeding Max&#8217;s suspicion. When the first official to whom Max shows the photo winds up dead, the out-of-favor agent suddenly finds himself the target of dark forces within the intelligence community who are desperate to muzzle him.<br><br>Eluding a global surveillance net, Max&#8212;in the summer of 2001&#8212;begins tracking the spore of a complex conspiracy, meeting clandestinely with suicide bombers and Arab royalty and ultimately realizing the Iranian he&#8217;d sought for a decades-old crime is actually at the nexus of a terrifying plot.<br><br>Showing off dazzling tradecraft and an array of richly textured backdrops, and filled with real names and events, <i>Blow the House Down</i> deftly balances fact and possibility to become the first great thriller to spring from the war on terrorism.<br><br><br>Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>