A review by vickijustwantstoread
The Handler by M.P. Woodward

4.0

Meredith Morris-Dale is a Handler for the CIA. She is ordered back to DC after her current asset is snatched, expecting to be in trouble, instead she is told she needs to convince her ex-husband John Dale to return to the CIA to help extract a former contact in Iran. Complicated doesn't begin to cover her feelings toward having to see her ex. They met when she was his Handler, fell in love, married and had a daughter. After he is suspended from the CIA they end up divorcing. Due to the circumstances of his suspension she knows he's not going to be willing to come back, especially with her boss, Ed Rance, involved. She gets the expected response but after he discovers someone tailing him in town and then finds a sniper on his property he agrees to return but only if she is his Handler and Rance is not in the loop of his whereabouts. His former contact in Iran,, Zana Rahimi, is a nuclear physicist whose daughter was killed in a plane crash caused by a misfired Iranian missile. To complicate things even more, the Russians are monitoring things and on Meredith & John's trail.

Sometimes spy thrillers are too long or too technical. This one was neither. I stayed on the edge of my seat and didn't want to stop reading. When you see the cast of characters you think, 'that's so many people to keep up with' but the story is so well laid out that I didn't have any trouble with it.