Inside Out
Overview: In the book Inside Out by Barry Eisler, Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton, who explains the price of Ben’s release: find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator from Ben’s unit who has stolen ninety-two torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the U.S. government.
But other players are after the tapes, too, and to find Larison, Ben will have to survive CIA hit teams, Blackwater mercenaries, and the long reach of the White House. He’ll also have to find a way to handle Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent who has her own reasons for wanting the tapes and is determined to get them before Ben does. With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle–everyone but Ben, who will have to find the right alliance if he wants to stay alive.
Pages: 316 Pages
Writer:Barry Eisler
Recommendations:
Barry Eisler’s Inside Out is a thriller that becomes even more interesting because its fictional story is woven around real-world events and news reports.
The story centers on a collection of interrogation tapes involving suspected terrorists that have mysteriously disappeared. Eisler has explained that Inside Out is his fictional interpretation of what might have happened to those missing tapes, taking known facts and building a conspiracy thriller around the unanswered questions.
At the center of the story is Ben Treven, who is tasked with tracking down the man believed to have taken the tapes. There is only one major problem: the man Ben is searching for is supposed to be dead.
Unfortunately, this particular dead man may be one of the only people who could have gotten access to the tapes in the first place.
Ben suddenly finds himself hunting a ghost while racing against a possible dead man’s trigger that could reveal to the entire world what really happens behind the scenes. The deeper Ben gets into the investigation, the more dangerous the situation becomes and the more complicated the truth appears to be.
One of the things I enjoyed most about Inside Out is the way Barry Eisler blends real events with fiction. He starts with facts and unanswered questions that actually existed and then builds his fictional story around them. That connection to reality gives the conspiracy at the center of the book a little more weight because there is always that thought in the back of your mind: What if something like this really did happen?
I also thought Ben Treven was much better developed as a character in this book. He feels more alive and more complete than he did before.
What I particularly appreciate is that Eisler doesn’t spend page after page explaining everything going through Ben’s mind. Instead, we get a couple of lines here and there that give us just enough insight into what he is thinking, why he reacts the way he does, and what motivates his decisions. Those smaller moments actually helped me understand the character better without slowing down the story.
That is especially important in a thriller like this. The story keeps moving while Ben continues to develop naturally alongside it.
Overall, I really enjoyed Inside Out. The combination of real-world events, political conspiracy, missing interrogation tapes, and Ben Treven’s growing character development made this a very entertaining read.
And, of course, Barry Eisler leaves the story exactly where an author wants to leave the reader: wanting more.
Considering how Inside Out ends, I am definitely ready to see where Ben Treven’s story goes next.