The Maghreb Conspiracy: The Third Spy Story in Croft’s Mideast Trilogy

Set in 2005, Croft’s third spy novel featuring MI6 operative and former journalist Michael Vaux (after 2013’s Operation Saladin) tapers off after an intriguing start. A wet-behind-the-ears agent, Sebastian Micklethwait, lands an extremely sensitive assignment. Micklethwait is to travel with facilitator Mokhtar Tawil to Morocco, where Tawil will help him connect with a member of al-Qaeda’s executive committee who’s offered to provide valuable intelligence on the group’s plans. The mission, dubbed Operation Apostate, goes awry almost immediately, as Tawil is murdered on the first leg of their trip and Micklethwait himself is taken prisoner. It falls to Vaux, who’s been tapped to oversee Operation Apostate, to try to rescue the agent and salvage whatever can be salvaged. Vaux is a familiar genre staple, a maverick who gets results, but this time out, Croft doesn’t give him enough depth to be truly memorable. [em](BookLife) [/em]