The Last Agent

Written by Robert Dugoni

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestselling series.

An American operative in Russia is on the run for his life in a thriller of heart-stopping betrayal and international intrigue by the New York Times bestselling author of The Eighth Sister.

Betrayed by his own country and tried for treason, former spy Charles Jenkins survived an undercover Russian operation gone wrong. Exonerated, bitter, and safe, the retired family man is through with duplicitous spy games. Then he learns of a woman isolated in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison.

If it’s Paulina Ponomayova, the agent who sacrificed her life to save his, Jenkins can’t leave her behind. But there’s no guarantee it’s her. Or proof Paulina is still alive. To find out, Jenkins must return to Russia. Next move: blackmail Viktor Federov, a former Russian officer with his own ax to grind, into helping him infiltrate Lefortovo. The enemy who once pursued Jenkins across three continents is now the only man Jenkins can trust.

Every step of the way—from Moscow to Scandinavia to the open ocean—they’re hunted by a brutal Russian agent on a killer quest of his own. Out of loyalty to Paulina—dead or alive—Jenkins is putting everyone’s life on the line for a new mission that could be his last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781799750802

Robert Dugoni

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, which has sold more than four million books worldwide. He is also the author of the bestselling David Sloane series; the Charles Jenkins series including The Eighth Sister, the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, for which he won an AudioFile Earphones Award for the narration; and the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post best book of the year. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. His books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Visit his website at www.robertdugoni.com.

Reviews for The Last Agent

[Allison Payne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Super exciting and I love that the characters coming back from book one. I wasn't expecting that, and I really love that. Dugoni is a cross between Clancy and Grisham...best of both. Awesome sauce!

[buffalogr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is so fast and so suspenseful. Charles Jenkins, retired CIA agent, is called back to duty,,,again! Last Agent picks up almost where The Eighth Sister ended and I have the same critique...it's too long....again! The book dragged on as Jenkins encountered hurdles at every turn. That said, on to book #3

[kimkimkim-7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There is something about a book dealing with spies and counterespionage set in Russia that immediately raises my heartbeat and respiration rate. At least that applies to Dugoni’s latest Charles Jenkins’ installment. I admit to being apprehensive and occasionally looking away from the page fearing what was coming next. I also admit to a modicum of incredulity from time to time, but hey, who is to say what is plausible in the current mood of the world and Putin’s Russia. There is an extraordinarily strong subtext that deals with men who want to win at any cost and who will admit loss only upon death. They are driven beyond reason; they live for the cat and mouse manipulation, hunt, and ultimate victory. Some of these men are well intentioned even though they are deluded, some not even close, some are self-absorbed, some are malcontents, some just evil. Beside the strong personalities, twists and turns abound along with many elaborate sliding doors and timing so tight that a heartbeat can decide the ending. Great writing, terrific plot development, intense situations – Robert Dugoni is a master of this thrill a minute genre. Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for a copy.

[samsattler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After reading Robert Dugoni’s soon-to-be-released The Last Agent, I am more thankful than ever that a book with the rather strange title The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell caught my eye almost exactly a year ago. When I picked up Sam Hell in May 2019, Robert Dugoni was a new-to-me author whose work I was completely unfamiliar with; by the time I finished the novel a few days later, he was someone I wanted to know a lot more about. Still unaware at that point that Dugoni was best known for the five-book David Sloan series and the then six-book Tracy Crosswhite series, I happened to stumble upon a new Dugoni book on display at my local library called The Eighth Sister a few weeks later. Much to my surprise, The Eighth Sister was nothing like The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell. Instead, I held a spy thriller in my hands that rivals the classics of the genre in complexity, character development, and sheer storytelling. Charles Jenkins, as a six-foot-five black man, is not your typical CIA spy, much less one who has much of a chance of blending into a Russian crowd. But that’s who he is, and that’s what he has to do if he is going to survive long enough to get back to his ex-spy wife and children. Jenkins only makes it out of Russia in The Eighth Sister at all because a heroic Russian agent sacrifices her own life to make his escape possible – or so he believes.But what if it turns out that she’s not dead?Now, in The Last Agent, Jenkins learns that Paulina Ponomayova may be suffering a fate worse than death – months-long interrogation in the notorious Lefortovo Prison at the hands of one of Russia’s most ruthless interrogators. Jenkins is not even sure if the woman he’s heard about really is Paulina, but he knows one thing: if it is her, he will not leave her behind. Jenkins will do whatever it takes to rescue the woman who saved his life and allowed him to meet his new baby daughter. Without her sacrifice, that could never have happened.So it’s back into Russia, where all Jenkins has to do this time is free Paulina from one of the most security-conscious political prisons in the whole country and get them both safely back to the U.S. Even James Bond in his prime might find this task a bit difficult, but it’s going to take a series of miracles for an unusually tall black man - a sixty-something-year-old one, at that - to pull off this one. Bottom Line: The Last Agent picks up almost where The Eighth Sister ended. The two novels are so closely tied together, in fact, that the reader can’t help but be a little astounded that Jenkins would dare risk his life by returning to the country he so recently barely escaped with his life. That, of course, is exactly the point. Charles Jenkins is not the kind of man who could ever turn his back on someone who sacrificed her life to save his. If fate has given him the unexpected chance to even the scales, he is going to take that chance while he has it. Robert Dugoni has written another exceptional spy thriller, one that works well as a standalone, but is even better when read as the sequel it is. The Charles Jenkins series is proving to be a good one. Review Copy provided by Publisher for Review Purposes