Espionage in Print

July 6, 2008

Child, Lee. BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE. Dell. April '08. $7.99. "From a helicopter high above the empty California desert, a man is sent free - falling into the night.... In Chicago, a woman learns that an elite team of ex-army investigators is being hunted down one by one.... And on the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher - soldier, cop, hero - is pulled out of his wandering life by a code that few other people could understand. From the first shocking scenes in Lee Child's explosive new novel, Jack Reacher is plunged like a knife into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends...and is on its way to something even worse. A decade postmilitary, Reacher has an ATM card and the clothes on his back - no phone, no ties, and no address. But now a woman from his old unit has done the impossible. From Chicago, Frances Neagley finds Reacher, using a signal only the eight members of their elite team of army investigators would know. She tells him a terrifying story - about the brutal death of a man they both served with. Soon Reacher is reuniting with the survivors of his old team, scrambling to raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that is growing darker by the day. The deeper they dig, the more they don't know: about two other comrades who have suddenly gone missing - and a trail that leads into the neon of Vegas and the darkness of international terrorism. For now, Reacher can only react. To every sound. Every suspicion. Every scent and every moment. Then Reacher will trust the people he once trusted with his life - and take this thing all the way to the end. Because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they'd better be ready for what comes right back at them...."

Clarke, Richard A. BREAKPOINT. Berkley Books. December '07. $9.99. "AGAINST ALL ENEMIES warned about how we were conducting the war against terror. THE SCORPION'S GATE demonstrated what could happen. And now America's preeminent counterterrorism expert and number-one-bestselling author shows us all...what might come next. The global village - an intricately intertwined network of technology that binds together the world's economies, governments, and communication systems. So large, so vital - and so fragile. Now a sophisticated group is seeking to 'disconnect the globe' - destroying internet cable centers, computer grids, communications satellites, biotech firms. Hard to do? If only that were so. The major government agencies all lumber into action, but behind the scenes, the special projects office of the Intelligence Analysis Center knows that to catch unconventional terrorists requires unconventional methods. A small team - smart, agile, and quick - immediately starts to sift through a welter of often contradictory information about right-wing militias. Russian organized crime, Jihadist terrorists, and enemy nations-states, chasing leads all across the country and overseas. But the attacks are coming more swiftly now, and growing in destructiveness. Soon, they will reach the breakpoint - and then there may be nothing anybody can do."

Flynn, Vince. PROTECT AND DEFEND. Atria Books. November '07. $26.95. "In PROTECT AND DEFEND, the action begins in the heart of Iran, where billions of dollars are being spent on the development of a nuclear program. No longer willing to wait for the international community to stop its neighboring enemy, Israel launches one of the most creative and daring espionage operations ever conceived. The attack leaves a radioactive tomb and environmental disaster in the middle of Iran's second largest city. An outraged Iranian government publicly blames both Israel and the United States for the attack and demands retribution. Privately, Iran s bombastic president wants much more. He wants America and Israel to pay for their aggression with blood. Enter Mitch Rapp, America's top counter-terrorism operative. Used to employing deception, Rapp sees an opportunity where others see only Iranian reprisals that could leave thousands of Americans dead. Rapp convinces President Josh Alexander to sign off on a risky operation that will further embarrass the Iranian government and push their country to the brink of revolution. As part of the plan, CIA director Irene Kennedy is dispatched to the region for a clandestine meeting with Azad Ashani, her Iranian counterpart. But Rapp isn't the only one hatching plans. Iranian President Amatullah, has recruited Hezbollah master terrorist Imad Mukhtar to do his dirty work. For decades Mukhtar has acted as a surrogate for Iran, blazing a trail of death and destruction across the Middle East and beyond. When Kennedy's meeting with Ashani goes disastrously wrong, Rapp and Mukhtar are set on a collision course that threatens to engulf the entire region in war. With the clock ticking, Rapp is given twenty-four hours, no questions asked, to do whatever it takes to stop Mukhtar, and avert an unthinkable catastrophe." Available in paperback. Pocket Books. September '08. $9.99.

Gores, Joe. GLASS TIGER. Harvest Books. September '07. $14.00. "Brendan Thorne, ex-Ranger in Panama, ex-sniper for a CIA front in Colombia, has foresworn violence and is living in Kenya when FBI agent Terrill Hatfield arranges for Thorne's deportation back to the United States. In a top-secret meeting, Thorne is told that Halden Corwin, legendary Vietnam sniper and mercenary, has vowed to assassinate the recently elected president of the United States. The government-s computers have picked Thorne as the most likely person to find Corwin and stop him. Thorne won-t have to kill anyone; Hatfield's crack FBI team will take care of that. But when the plan doesn't go as described, Thorne discovers he can't trust anyone or anything he's been told. Drawn into a web of lies, ambitions, and double-crosses, Thorne must run for his life and, ultimately, stand and fight."

Pringle, Peter. DAY OF THE DANDELION. Simon & Schuster. August '07. $25.00. First in a new series. "Seeds of a new corn plant are stolen from Oxford University's botany lab, and the professor, Alastair Scott, and his Russian assistant, Tanya Petrovskaya, are missing. Alarms ring in London and Washington, where intelligence officials know that Scott was working on a supergene that could allow control over the world's entire food supply. The British government calls in Arthur Hemmings from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. To his coworkers, Hemmings is just another researcher in the herbarium, but for many years he has been a secret service agent, an outwardly rumpled but dashing covert adventurer. Officials see a Moscow plot. Has Scott been kidnapped? Is he dead? Have Scott and Tanya fled to Russia? And why is Oxford's vice-chancellor withholding vital information? The intrepid Hemmings follows a series of clues into the cutthroat world of international patents, where the hunt for priceless genes is always nasty and often deadly. In Arthur Hemmings, Pringle has created an original heartbreaker of a hero, a botanist detective with a dash of James Bond. Facing murderous threats, Hemmings investigates fearlessly and with devastating precision. Handsome, witty, an ambitious cook, and a wine lover, he is irresistible to a much younger American female researcher. DAY OF THE DANDELION is a seductive modern hybrid of the thrillers of Graham Greene and the adventure novels of Ian Fleming, filled with political, scientific, and commercial intrigue, and laced with miracle plants, deadly toxins, kidnappings, and car chases. It will keep the reader in suspense and amused from prelude to postscript."

Reilly, Matthew. THE 6 SACRED STONES. Simon & Schuster. January '08. $25.00. Sequel to SEVEN DEADLY WONDERS. "Unlocking the secret of the Seven Ancient Wonders was only the beginning... After their thrilling exploits in Matthew Reilly's rampaging New York Times bestseller, 7 Deadly Wonders, supersoldier Jack West Jr. and his loyal team of adventurers are back, and now they face an all-but-impossible challenge. A mysterious ceremony in an unknown location has unraveled their work and triggered a catastrophic countdown that will climax in no less than the end of all life on Earth. But there is one last hope. If Jack and his team can find and rebuild a legendary ancient device known only as the "Machine," they might be able to ward off the coming armageddon. The only clues to locating this Machine, however, are held within the fabled Six Sacred Stones, long lost in the fog of history. And so the hunt begins for the Six Sacred Stones and the all-important knowledge they possess, but in the course of this wild adventure Jack and his team will discover that they are not the only ones seeking the Stones and that there might just be other players out there who don't want to see the world saved at all. From Stonehenge in England to the deserts of Egypt to the spectacular Three Gorges region of China, The 6 Sacred Stones will take you on a nonstop roller-coaster ride through ancient history, modern military hardware, and some of the fastest and most mind-blowing action you will ever read." Available in paperback. Pocket Books. January '09. $7.99.

Seymour, Gerald. RAT RUN. Overlook Press. February '08. $14.95. "All traces of self-esteem have been brutally stripped from Malachy Kitchen, an Intelligence officer posted to Iraq. He is accused of cowardice while on patrol with an infantry platoon ambushed by insurgents. Word spreads that he ran under hostile fire. In the military family there is no worse crime. Humiliated and broken, kicked out of the army, Malachy sinks into despair. His wife leaves him, and he soon becomes an isolated recluse in a drug-infested London neighborhood. But when his elderly neighbor is mugged by addicts, he is put to the task of avenging the crime - working on his own, and outside the law. Something is triggered inside of him, something that draws him to fight to regain his lost pride. Man by man, he aims to take on the underground network of pushers, dealers, suppliers that have long ruled the streets of London. Their head is Ricky Capel, a crime baron importing heroin into the UK. Untouchable up to now, Capel immediately finds himself confronting an enemy more driven than any of the policeman he has so far successfully outwitted. Just as Capel is obsessed with Kitchen, he is approached by an Albanian associate, who demands that he use his drug route to ferry an Islamic terrorist fanatic to Britain - and Kitchen unwittingly finds himself on course to intercept this shipment."

Silva, Daniel. MOSCOW RULES. Putnam. August '08. $26.95. "Now the death of a journalist leads Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He's playing by Moscow rules now. This is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States. One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business: Kharkov is an arms dealer - and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11 - and the clock is ticking fast. Filled with rich prose and breathtaking turns of plot, MOSCOW RULES is at once superior entertainment and a searing cautionary tale about the new threats rising to the East - and Silva's finest novel yet." Simultaneous release on Audio CD from Brilliance Audio. Abridged edition.

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