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LOST SON

Brett Forrest

An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars

INTO THE WILD meets RED NOTICE, Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Forrest's extraordinary LOST SON unspools the story of Billy Reilly, a young American enlisted by the FBI to develop intelligence, who vanishes during a mysterious trip into Russia's war against Ukraine, leading his parents on a desperate search through espionage's hall of mirrors.
Billy Reilly was an iconoclast. Sept. 11th awoke in him a curiosity for global conflict, religions, and people beyond his small town. Growing up in smalltown Michigan, Billy had trouble connecting with others. Online, he taught himself Arabic and Russian. He read the Quran during class at his Catholic school and spoke of an Islamic conversion. His passions led him into jihadi Internet forums, attracting the attention of the FBI, which recruited him as a Confidential Human Source.

An amateur drawn into professional intelligence, Billy was an FBI tri-lingual counterterrorism researcher. Later, as an operative in the field, he monitored terrorist plots, conversed with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine, under assumed identities cultivated FBI investigative targets in Metro Detroit, and pitched in on cases of major national-security significance. When Russia fomented war in Ukraine's Donbas region, Billy found a new fascination. Taking a desperate gamble, he set out on a quest. In Russia, freed from the Internet and enraptured by his own true adventures, Billy severed communications.

His parents, desperate and bewildered, turned to the FBI for help but struggled to find answers. Had the FBI dispatched Billy abroad, or had he gone on his own? Would anyone in Washington help find Billy and bring him home? Grasping for clues, the Reilly family turned to Brett Forrest. Picking up where the Reillys had left off, he staked out on his own investigation.

Applying years' worth of determined reporting and research, Forrest unveils the inner workings of our national-security machine through one family enmeshed within it. His reporting leads him through encounters with jihadi suspects in Michigan and Russian nationalists and spies in Moscow and Kiev, and inside the Department of Justice in Washington.

LOST SON is a masterwork of reporting, a tour de force composed like a thriller, blending political maneuvering and international espionage while illustrating one man's coming of age amid new global dangers in this riveting modern fable.

The author, Brett Forrest, writes about national security and investigative subjects for the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of THE BIG FIX, an international crime bestseller in development as a feature film at FOX, and also LONG BOMB. His crime and international-affairs articles have appeared regularly in periodicals including Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, Time, Wired, Fortune, Foreign Policy, and Playboy. He was formerly a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, where he wrote extensively about sports and crime and co-directed the ESPN/ABC true-crime documentary, Pin Kings, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. For a decade, Forrest was stationed abroad in Russia, Ukraine, and Brazil. He has reported from nearly 50 countries, and his articles have been syndicated in more than 30 languages.
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Book

Published 2023-05-23 by Little, Brown and Company

Book

Published 2023-05-23 by Little, Brown and Company

Comments

With the narrative drive and filigreed detail of a spy novel, Lost Son (May 2023, Little, Brown) is an uncanny feat of non-fiction: a geopolitical thriller, a detective procedural with Mobius-strip twists, and the absorbing narrative of an anguished Michigan family - a saga that gets more riveting with each page ... Brett Forrest, an expert on Russia and national security issues at The Wall Street Journal, is known for his gonzo reporting, gut-punch prose, and cinematic scene-setting. In Lost Son, he fires on all these cylinders and then goes further, exploring his own career, motives, and psyche. In the end, he unearths the molten core of a young man's secret life. Forrest, evoking James M. Cain and Graham Greene, offers a masterwork of intrigue and shoe-leather reportage.

With the stunning tale of Billy Reilly, Brett Forrest has achieved something remarkable. He has brought together both the post-9/11 war on terror and the war in Ukraine and shown their fateful impact on a young American who wanted something more from life than suburban Detroit could deliver. Reading this amazing story, I kept thinking that Billy was like a character in a 19th-century Russian novel, caught up in the uncontrollable tide of history.

With the narrative drive and filigreed detail of a spy novel, Lost Son is an uncanny feat of non-fiction: a geopolitical thriller, a detective procedural with Mobius-strip twists, and the absorbing narrative of an anguished Michigan family - a saga that gets more riveting with each page... Forrest, evoking James M. Cain and Graham Greene, offers a masterwork of intrigue and shoe-leather reportage.

Brett Forrest's emotional and globe-trotting investigation into the life and times of a young FBI freelancer immediately reminds me of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. LOST SON is as much about the youthful dream to make a difference in the world as it is about the utter failure of the US government to protect one of its own contractors and the heartbreaking search by parents for their son. What I loved most is feeling like I was riding shotgun with Brett as he searches for answers.

TIME shared an explosive original essay by Brett Forrest about the controversial and secretive FBI Confidential Human Source program that he details in the book: Why the FBI's Troubling History With Informants Is Getting New Attention... Read more...

French: Dark Side (Hachette)

LOST SON is the harrowing story of Billy Reilly, a lost soul who, seeking meaning and purpose in life, volunteered as a civilian foot soldier in the war on terror. With great skill, and deep humanity, Brett Forrest tracks Billy's every move as he wanders through the labyrinth of American national security, crosses a shadow line, and winds up on the wrong side of history. It's a gripping story, stranger than fiction, superbly told.

An essay by Brett Forrest about the controversial and secretive FBI Confidential Human Source program that he details in the book. Read more...

A young American, desperate for purpose after 9/11, finds himself embroiled in the war on terror as a 'keyboard commando' for the FBI, then quickly in over his head operating undercover in the field. In a reportorial masterpiece, Forrest tracks Billy Reilly's disappearance within the bloody conflict between Russia and Ukraine, becoming part of the story -- and personally invested -- himself. A mesmerizing narrative.

LOST SON grabs you from the jump and never lets go as the story careens around the globe with the velocity of a stray bullet. You'll never forget the main character of Billy Reilly, whose unbelievable life blasts through a hall of mirrors that is modern espionage, counter-espionage, war, terrorism and the inner workings of power in Washington. This story is so insane that it can only be totally true. Brett Forrest has produced a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction about the national security state.

A complex tale of espionage and betrayal against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine... An intriguing, somber study of the manipulation of a single person in the context of big events.