Final Payment

By Quentin Thomas Wells

Book Overview

Final Payment is a Cold War thriller. When an Israeli aircraft struck by a missile fired from Egypt crash lands in the occupied Sinai, CIA officers Serina Gray and Clay Kinkaide are tasked to purchase... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1539934667
• ISBN13: 9781539934660
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 430 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Final Payment is a Thriller

Clean, clear, concise. The stuff good spy thrillers are made of! Quentin's background in the CIA shows up in the book's feel of authenticity. The characters are engaging without overpowering the story. No lag-time. I like that!

Prepare for sleepless night

Wow. It's been a long time since I read a book that cost me a nights sleep. The story is very well researched and filled with enough twists to keep you guessing right to the end. There were several times when I anxiously waited for something to happen (or not happen !) and was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. I especially liked the character development. Similiar to a Dean Koontz book, the characters are believable, doing logical things in a difficult situation, and easy to relate too. Their growing relationship is just what would be expected in a covert assignment. Absolutely enjoyable. I anxiously await the sequel.

Writing the Spy Life

Writing the spy lifeSLCC administrator uses short career with CIA as fodder for first novelBy Maria Titze Deseret News staff writer It wasn't like a James Bond movie. Nor was it like working at a quiet community college."Long periods of research and tedium, punctuated by occasional moments of stark terror."That's how Quentin T. Wells, director of program innovation at Salt Lake Community College, describes his brief career with the CIA.Three decades after his four-year-stint as a covert officer assigned to Soviet Bloc Operations, Wells has written a novel. "Final Payment" is a story of international intrigue and romance set in the early 1970s in Israel and Paraguay."It's based on two cases I knew of in the agency," Wells said. "It's information that, to my knowledge, has never appeared in the media before."Wells, who oversees the production of Web classes and telecourses for SLCC, is a bookish man who speaks without bravado -- or much detail -- about his life as a spy."It's a dog's life for a family," he said.A Utah native, Wells joined the CIA while he was a student at the University of Utah.At the height of the Cold War, "the CIA maintained contact on many university campuses," he said, looking for suitable recruits."To work in Soviet Bloc Operations, you had to be married," Wells said. "They wanted you to have somebody you could trust -- and they didn't want her to be Russian."Wells and his wife had no children at the time, and the job in Washington, D.C., seemed inviting. "It looked like a great adventure," he said.Wells had a standard CIA cover. To friends and neighbors, he was a civilian employee of the U.S. Army, working in personnel research and assessment."There was an office on 2nd and R Street, not far from where the Roosevelt Memorial is now, a fenced complex where those of us with covers said we worked," Wells explained. There, a CIA employee answered the phone and verified Wells' cover story to whoever inquired.Wells said the toughest part of his job was learning to lie. "Wherever I went, whether it was applying for a loan or buying life insurance, I had to tell this story about what I did for a living," he said. "You just wrote down the information and hoped it would always check out."It always did -- although there were a few close calls. "I remember bumping into a professor I'd had at the U. once," Wells said. "He was in Washington, and I saw him at this meeting and didn't have a chance to say anything to him alone." In front of a group of people, he leaned over the table and asked Wells how things were going at "that secret agency." Wells didn't miss a beat. "A lot of folks think . . . (the Army) is pretty secretive, but we're much more open than that," he said.It seemed to work. Wells said his professor got the hint, and no one else at the gathering seemed suspicious.Wells won't say what countries he visited as an employee of the CIA."None, officially," he said. "If you checked, I nev