Meet the Egyptian-American FBI agent who foiled an Al Qaeda plot: By dispatch time, some of us here will be on Amazon looking to snap up a copy of American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent. The book takes a look at a year-long FBI investigation that foiled a 2013 Al Qaeda plot to derail a Canadian passenger train. Its protagonist: an Egyptian American undercover agent who goes by the alias “Tamer Elnoury.”

The book, which channels other tell-alls on Hollywood blockbuster-worthy operations that run the risk of unveiling classified information, also dives into Elnoury’s transition from a New Jersey narcotics officer to his first sting operation with a member of the Al Qaeda cell. It apparently ends with a Le Carre-like scene in which Elnoury is almost caught. He has since retired from the FBI, but remains an active counter-terrorist operative for the bureau.

Elnoury tells the Wall Street Journal that publishing the book risks blowing his cover, but he wrote it to honor fellow FBI agents and, as a proud Muslim, to expose what he called the “sometimes vast and sometimes subtle” divide between radical and mainstream Islam. You can also check out a clip from his interview with CBS News’ 60 Minutes, in which he wears facial prosthesis and alters his voice (watch, runtime: 1:34).