YMMV / John Wells

• Iron Woobie: Wells. When you consider how he sacrifices his first wife, his son, and his girlfriend to save his country, you can't help but sympathize him.
• Jerkass Woobie: David Miller. He's a drug dealer, yes, but given the way Stan and Amadullah treat him, it's hard to not feel any sympathy for him. General Li too, despite nearly kicking off World War III, he had the best intentions for the poor people in China but his pride and Well-Intentioned Extremist destroys him and causes him suffers a fate worse than death in his view, being disgraced, forgotten and being forced to commit suicide alone by his younger and more Smug Snake rivals. As a result, it's nearly impossible to not feel some sympathy to him when he's forced to kill himself to save his wife from possible harm (Alas, Poor Villain).
• One-Scene Wonder: Jordan Weiging in Ghost War, Grigory Farzadov in Silent Man, Hassan in Secret Soldier, Yergin in Shadow Patrol.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: A criticism to the Silent Man. Wells and Exley's relationship feels shoehorned, and the subplot about jihadis' stealing and smuggling nuclear bomb to America ends up being more interesting than Wells' plot.
• Seasonal Rot: Very subtle, but there. Wells and Exley become more cliche and two-dimensional after Faithful Spy. Thankfully, Berenson recovers by Midnight House.
• Sophomore Slump: The Faithful Spy is excellent. The Ghost War and the Silent Man are standard spy novel. For better or worse, The Midnight House returns Wells to his roots, a loner American spy convert to Muslim.
• Tough Act to Follow: The Faithful Spy is legendary among spy fiction enthusiasts. The rest, good, but not so much. In fact, the cover of the seventh book still mentions the Faithful Spy to tout Berenson.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Sayyid Nasiji in The Silent Man. He plots to start World War Three by nuking America and blaming Russia for it. In a flashback, however, it's revealed that he respected American teachers, believed jihad to be a waste of time, and condemned the 9/11 attack. Nasiji's devilish intent was born when his father and mother and brother and sister were murdered by Shia militants that the United States let loose in Iraq War.