The Foreign Service Journal - November 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2017 39 he is just one actor in a larger and quickly unfolding scene with unpredictable international implications. Mark Wentling joined the USAID Foreign Service in 1977 and served in Niger, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Angola, Somalia and Tan- zania. After retiring in 1996, he worked under contract as USAID’s senior adviser for the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa and as a consultant in Malawi, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. Prior to joining USAID, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for five years, beginning in 1967, in Honduras and Togo, and then served as Peace Corps director in Gabon and Niger. His work and travels over the past 46 years have taken him to all 54 African countries. Enemy of the Good Matthew Palmer, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017, $28/hardcover; $13.99/Kindle, 400 pages. Kate Hollister is a second-generation Foreign Service officer, recently assigned to Kyrgyzstan. Her uncle is the U.S. ambas- sador to the country, and he pulled a few strings to get his niece, who attended high school in the region, assigned to his mission. U.S.–Kyrgyz relations are at a critical juncture. U.S. authori- ties have been negotiating with the country's president on the lease of an airbase that would expand the American footprint in Central Asia and could tip the scale in “the Great Game,” the competition among Russia, China and the United States for influence in the region. Negotiations are controversial because of the Kyrgyz regime’s abysmal human-rights record, and the fate of the airbase hangs in the balance. Kate’s uncle assigns her to infiltrate an underground democ- racy movement that has been sabotaging Kyrgyz security services and regime supporters. Though she has an in—many followers of the movement were high school classmates—it soon becomes clear that nothing about Kate’s mission is as it seems. Matthew Palmer is a 25-year veteran of the Foreign Service who is currently serving as the director for South Central Europe in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. He is the author of three other diplomatic thrillers, The Wolf of Sarajevo (2016), Secrets of State (2015) and The American Mission (2014), all pub- lished by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.