The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer

(Little, Brown, $28)

“Any discussion of Islamic terrorism is likely to begin with one name, Osama bin Laden,” said Eric Liebetrau in The Boston Globe. Yet as journalists Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer argue in their gripping new book, the conversation might as easily begin with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In a “rapid-fire narrative that reads like an espionage thriller,” the authors recount U.S. law enforcement’s decade-long effort to capture the man who was the de facto operational leader of al Qaida throughout the terrorist group’s most devastatingly effective years. A U.S.-educated Kuwaiti citizen of Pakistani descent, Mohammed was orchestrating deadly anti-U.S. attacks long before he won bin Laden’s approval to use planes as missiles for the 9/11 offensive.

It’s startling how long Mohammed was able to operate under the radar, said Joshua Sinai in The Washington Times. Despite his involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, all but a few people in U.S. intelligence presumed him to be a peripheral figure until 9/11. Mohammed carried on with his brutal work once the hunt heated up, personally beheading the U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 while a video camera was rolling. “One wishes the authors were more attentive in tying up loose ends” in this complex story, but they’ve provided deeper context than any journalists before them.

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Most of us still know too little about “KSM,” said Steve Weinberg in The Seattle Times. As McDermott and Meyer point out, his story may never get the public attention it deserves because U.S. officials would rather not have to answer questions about the 183 waterboarding sessions he was subjected to after his 2003 capture. Last week’s announcement that Mohammed will soon face a military tribunal may finally signal that the KSM saga is nearing resolution. Except, as the authors remind us, that many jihadists he recruited remain active and at large. That unsettling thought provides a “sobering conclusion” to “a remarkable book.”