Manuel Roig-Franzia / Washington Post

One surreal night in 2010, a team of forensic specialists under orders from Venezuela’s mercurial president, Hugo Chávez, lifted a coffin lid on live television.

Inside lay the remains of Simón Bolívar, the famed military leader and political icon who had freed vast stretches of South America from Spanish rule in the early 1800s. Chávez, who idolized the man known as El Libertador — The Liberator — had become fixated on proving a conspiracy theory that Bolívar had not died of tuberculosis, as had been widely accepted by historians, but rather had been poisoned by a confederacy of enemies that included Colombian aristocrats, the king of Spain and the president of the United States, Andrew Jackson.

Pat Zi / Joy on Paper

It was such an honor to talk to Dr. Moisés Naím.

I have spoken a many global bestselling authors, many celebrities, and even the Poet Laureate. But never one of “world’s leading thinkers’ as he is known. I felt like I should have addressed him as Dr. Naím, but he was so gracious and so I got on a first time name with this great man. After all, as he pointed out, he is a first time novelist….and what a novel! Two Spies in Caracas is a powerful thriller that takes readers into the turmoil of a collapsing Venezuela.

It harkens back to the best of Helen McInnes who knew how to write about spies, romance, and political intrigues.

In one of history’s most dangerous revolutions when Hugo Chavez led a coup against the Venezuela government, two rival spies are pitted against each other. Cristina Garza works for the CIA. She has two goals: help stabilize the oil reserves and eliminate Cuba’s influence. At the same time Iván Rincón of Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate is determined to neutralizing any American agents. But soon in the dangerous streets of Caracas Iván and Cristina are caught in a tangled web of lies and deceits — and shifting alliances as they play a game of espionage and murder.

Moisés Naím is not only a great thinker…but a great novelist.

You will love this book!