Quiller Meridian

Quiller Meridian is the 17th installment of the brilliant Quiller series—in my opinion the best spy fiction series of all time. It's now the 1990s; although the Soviet Union has fallen and the Cold War has ended, there are still missions to accomplish, operational excellence to be achieved, and life to be lived on the edge of death. Those have always been what drives Quiller, not the ambitions of the powerful or the causes of fanatics (in fact the latter are Quiller's enemies in this story, as in most others). 

I was particularly interested to read this installment, since it takes place in a setting I'm familiar with. I've actually ridden the Trans-Siberian Express in 1990s, in the dead of winter, and visited some of the cities mentioned in the story. I've experienced the sauna-like heat on the trains, the crowded quarters, the bad food, the good tea, the corrupt employees, the brutal cold and the poor, frozen Siberian villages—which in winter are surely among the bleakest inhabited places on earth.

The story opens in Budapest, where Quiller has been rushed to try to clean up a botched rendezvous with a Russian informant named Zymyanin, who has some kind of critical intelligence to transmit to the Bureau (Quiller's shadowy agency). Unfortunately the meeting was blown, one agent has been decapitated on the train tracks, and the informant has fled to parts unknown. But the thread soon picks up in Moscow, where Zymyanin is boarding the Trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Vladivostok, and Quiller follows him aboard. On board Quiller does his usual tense, hyper-aware tradecraft, and soon discovers that three powerful Russian generals are on the train, along with a beautiful young woman named Tanya who is friendly with one of them. He also discovers Zymyanin, who warns him that the generals are members of the Podpolia—the hard-line underground that wants to end Russia's experiment with democracy and bring back the Soviet Union—and tells him to keep them under close surveillance. Unfortunately, Quiller never learns anything else from the informant, because he is soon found dead in a bathroom with a gunshot to the head. Worse, Quiller has been framed for the killing by one of the general's bodyguards.

From here the story goes into overdrive, as the train car where the generals had been staying is bombed, derailing the train, and Quiller has to escape the authorities who seal off the train and get to safety in the frozen city of Novosobirsk, the most wanted man in Siberia. More classic Quiller tradecraft follows, as he evades surveillance, employs safe houses, and makes contact with his favorite director in the field, Ferris. At this point Quiller has to wing it to continue the mission, which becomes personal after Tanya is taken into custody by the authorities on suspicion of involvement in the killing of one of the generals.

There follows a rather far-fetched gambit by Quiller to free Tanya from the militsiya (police), which seemed too Hollywood and over the top by the usually realistic standards of this series. There are also car chases, killings, and two new key characters are introduced: an unhinged rogue agent who is out for revenge against the generals, and Tanya's brother, a captain in the Russian army, who becomes Quiller's key ally in his mission to discover what the generals are up to and foil their plans. The story races to a climax as Quiller reaches the site of the generals' big meeting, where he uncovers a vast conspiracy to establish a "new world order" that echoes forward to our time. However, the ending seemed a bit rushed and again, a bit unrealistic for this series.

All in all, this was a tense, entertaining, intelligent read, not in the top tier of the series but still highly recommended for all shadow-fiction fans.

Get a copy of Quiller Meridian here.

The Domino Vendetta

The Domino Vendetta, published in 1984 by Adam Kennedy, is the sequel to his excellent 1975 novel The Domino Principle, which I previously reviewed here. It continues the saga of everyman Roy Tucker, a working class murder convict who was sprung from prison by a shadowy cabal of powerful men in return for carrying out a high-level assassination.

Vendetta continues where Principle left off,  as Tucker, following the grim ending of the last novel, is still in Costa Rica and under attack by agents of the cabal. Tucker survives the assault, then proceeds to burn down his villa, dump his attackers' car in the ocean and take off on foot, their identity cards and cash in hand. Using those, Tucker flies to Brazil to hide out and figure out what to do next. But the cabal soon finds him and tries to frame him for a murder, which Tucker narrowly escapes.

Meanwhile, everyone involved in the assassination plot is being killed off, including Tucker himself, according to a newspaper report. Tucker decides that he's through running and returns stateside to take the fight to the cabal. The problem is he has no idea where to find them or how to take them on. He turns to the last person alive who can help him, his long-time lawyer and close friend from his Vietnam War days, Robert Applegate. Applegate has gone into hiding, but Tucker manages to track him down and get him to talk.  It turns out that Applegate has some inside information about the conspirators who enlisted Roy for his hit on the American ex-president. The description he provides of the cabal and their agenda sound all-too plausible, even more so today than in 1984:

The group, which calls itself Interworld Alliance, admits that it aspires to a position of high-level international influence, something apolitical, extra-political, a kind of world government outside government that speaks the language of business. Profit and loss, expansion and growth, acquisition, manipulation, and planned obsolescence. Brave New World, Man and Superman, business is business, money talks.

We learn that Interworld's chief military advisor, an American general named Reser, has a devious scheme to get permanent control of Middle Eastern oil. We also learn why Interworld targeted an ex-president for assassination and enlisted Tucker for the hit.

Roy Tucker, being a common man motivated by common emotions, doesn't much care about this larger conspiracy. He simply wants  violent revenge for the wrongs the conspirators have done to him and his loved ones, and in particular, revenge against Reser. Ever the cunning redneck, Tucker prepares a trap to bring the Interworld men to him so that he can get to them. The novel moves quickly toward a dramatic climax, as Tucker makes his way to New York, where Reser is scheduled to address the United Nations and announce his "peace initiative" in the Middle East. Tucker uses his natural ninja cunning to get close to his target, and like the first novel, this one ends with a violent, dark twist.

Vendetta was a worthy sequel to The Domino Principle; though not quite as riveting and a little slow at times, it was a well-written, tightly plotted continuation of the Roy Tucker saga. It fleshes out the events of the first novel, not only with regard to the assassination conspiracy, but Tucker's early life, the events that landed him in prison, his time in Vietnam, and the love of his life, his late wife Thelma. The tough, resourceful, poor country boy convict from West Virginia is a sympathetic character, like a more human and likeable Jason Bourne, on the run from sinister power players but determined to survive and get revenge. This series is definitely worth your time if you enjoy classic assassin/conspiracy thrillers along these lines.

Get a copy of The Domino Vendetta here. 

The Domino Principle

The Domino Principle, published in 1975 by Adam Kennedy, is another semi-forgotten classic from the golden age of paranoid thrillers. Like The Parallax View, Six Days of the Condor, The Killer Elite, Telefon, and Flashpoint, it was made into Hollywood movie—this one starring Gene Hackman, which I haven't seen but am told wasn't particularly good. Like Parallax and Pay Any Price, Domino imagines a world where shadowy agencies recruit patsies from among the general population to carry out assassinations, while keeping them in the dark about the nature of their work.

As the novel opens, Roy Tucker, the underprivileged son of generations of manual laborers, is in the early stages of a twenty year murder rap. He has stopped writing his devoted wife and resigned himself to spending his best years behind bars. Things look hopeless when one day a well-dressed, high-powered man named Tagge shows up at the prison and offers to get Roy released and re-unite him with his wife. All Roy has to do in return is whatever Tagge tells him to once he's on the outside. Tagge just has a few questions for Roy, re: his murder rap (Roy was framed by a jealous employer), his contacts on the outside (a lawyer and a doctor), the status of his family (all deceased except a sister) and his wife Thelma (no longer in contact), and his military service in Vietnam (excellent discipline record, combat record and skill as a marksman). Otherwise, Roy is kept in the dark about what Tagge expects from him. Desperate to get out of prison and figuring he has nothing to lose, Roy accepts blindly.

Roy is let out of the prison as planned, but a violent twist soon lets him know that Tagge's crew are utterly ruthless and not to be crossed. Holed up in Chicago, Roy is given cash, new clothes and a new identity. Though he's a fugitive, there's no sign that the authorities are on his trail. His lawyer and doctor want nothing to do with him and can't help him, and his wife is out of reach. Roy may be out of prison, but he's totally alone and at Tagge's mercy.

Roy is soon jetted off to a luxurious Central American villa for some post-prison R&R with Thelma. He's briefly tested to make sure his shooting skills are up to snuff, then his actual mission starts to come into focus. Not too keen on his assignment and realizing that he has traded one prison sentence for another, Roy attempts to escape the clutches of Tagge's men. I don't want to reveal too much about the story, so I'll keep this review short. Let's just say that it races to a dark and dramatic climax in the best noir tradition.

This is not the typical men's adventure or spy story featuring a superman protagonist who saves the world and gets the girl. This is all about one poor man's struggles against the forces of control—against poverty, the military, his employer, the law, the prison system, and finally Tagge's shadowy group. The latter are seemingly all-powerful: they control prison personnel, military men, policemen, hotel employees, airlines, customs agents and phone lines almost at will. And every attempt by Roy to escape their control only reveals more of their power. Who exactly this group is is not clear; from Roy's everyman perspective they are simply the Man, and can do whatever they want.

Domino is fast, lean and well-written; it reminded me of a Dan Marlowe novel with its noir atmosphere, fast pace and immersive action. Kennedy puts you right in the shoes of Roy Tucker—a simple guy who never quite knows what's going on but who, like Earl Drake, knows when to trust his gut and how to survive. This is an excellent novel that deserves to be read by all connoisseurs of assassin, noir and conspiracy thrillers. Apparently there is also a sequel called The Domino Vendetta published in the 1984, which I will definitely track down and review at my earliest convenience

Get a copy of The Domino Principle here.

100 Megaton Kill

After the rather subdued, cerebral novel of my previous review, I was in the mood for some good old pulpy spy-adventure fiction, and I found just the ticket on my bookshelf: 100 Megaton Kill, by Ralph Hayes. Published in 1975, it's the first in a series of six novels about "Check Force": an unlikely pair of spies who team up to take down a sinister global cabal.

That this was not going to be a highly realistic novel of shadow warfare was made clear at the outset, when a bad guy, having nearly killed a secretary who surprised him while he was burgling some documents after-hours, decides that the expedient thing to do is to feed her body into a paper shredder. It's apparently a very heavy-duty paper shredder, though he acts surprised when there's a lot of blood and he has a little trouble with the job. And when he's confronted a few minutes later by a co-worker, instead of killing him so there's no witnesses, he plays it cool and claims he just saw two strangers leave the office, then proceeds to throw paper shreds over the human hamburger, wipe off his fingerprints and pretend like nothing happened. This is the kind of zany stuff that makes men's adventure fiction from that era so much fun!

The spared witness turns out to be Alexander Chane, an ace agent and crack shooter who was already thinking about leaving the Agency due to its corrupt and war-mongering ways. When Chane's boss tries to frame Chane for the gruesome office killing, and Chane learns that the boss is connected to a mysterious conspiracy called "Force III" that involves Russian missile bases, Chane goes on the run from the Agency until he can sort everything out. Meanwhile, a top Russian agent named Vladimir Karlov has defected from the KGB for similar reasons as Chane and is hiding out in the British embassy in Paris.

The globe-trotting action is fast and furious from here on out. Karlov is attacked in Paris, Chane in New York, and both flee to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to hide out. Realizing that they have no allies and a common enemy in Force III, the two join forces to defeat the cabal. More assassins show up, more information about the conspiracy is uncovered, and Chane even finds time for meaningless sex with two horny hotties, because it's 1975 and it's a men's adventure novel, so why the hell not? The action then shifts to Russia, where the dynamic duo have to infiltrate a missile base to stop a Force III agent from launching a devastating thermonuclear ICBM attack on New York City. This was easily the highlight of the book; the way Karlov infiltrates the base and the dramatic scene at the missile silo was tense, exciting and almost believable.

We also go inside a few meetings of Force III, who, like any self-respecting evil cabal, have a massive secret complex from which they're plotting world domination. Their base is underground in the Argentinian outback, where they're working to unleash nuclear terror on the USA and trigger World War III. Their leader is a nasty Nazi-like character named General Streicher, whose junta has recently taken over Argentina. The Brazilian President, the Chilean Defense minister, a Greek shipping magnate and a very rich Arab are also involved. While this all sounds very cartoonish, it may have been inspired by a real conspiracy called Operation Condor that was going on in South America at the time. The novel's climax takes place at this complex, and the ending strongly suggests that Force III is not defeated, but like SPECTRE will return to haunt the world and our protagonists again soon.

100 Megaton Kill reminds me of a Robert Ludlum story stripped down to its essentials and told in 200 pages instead of 600. In particular, it brings to mind Ludlum's 1979 novel The Matarese Circle, with its idea of an American and a Russian intelligence officer teaming up against a third global force that is sabotaging both sides and trying to provoke world war; it also has (pre-)echoes of The Bourne Identity and The Aquitaine Progression. While I rather doubt that Ludlum read this novel, for me it shows that he was really just a puffed-up pulp/men's adventure novelist who somehow became a mega best-seller.

Anyway, this was a fun, quick read. It's not going to win any literary awards, but if you like Nick Carter/Mack Bolan style men's adventures and aren't overly concerned with realism, there's no reason why you shouldn't enjoy this one. It's also apparently a collectible, judging by the price in excess of $50 on the used market (I lucked out and got it as part of a large lot at a buck a book). And note the cover, a masterpiece of 1970s men's adventure pulp--I'll be damned if the villain isn't a dead ringer for Laurence Olivier/Szell from Marathon Man.

Get a copy of 100 Megaton Kill here.

Pay Any Price

Ted Allbeury was a prolific British spy novelist who, before becoming a writer, actually lived the life of a Shadow Operative as a secret agent behind enemy lines in World War II. I'd never read his work before, but when I saw the description of his 1983 novel Pay Any Price I was immediately intrigued. It deals with a fascinating front of the Shadow War that is arguably the most important of all: the war for the mind.

The novel's premise is that Lee Harvey Oswald and other notorious assassins were actually under the hypnotic control of rogue psychiatrists working for the CIA. That might sound outlandish, but when one studies some of the historical assassins and mass shooters up to the present day, many of them do seem rather disconnected from their acts, as if they were committed by alter egos not under their control. Having read a few things about the history of CIA mind control (The Search for the Manchurian Candidate is a classic) and MKUltra, I find the premise of this novel chillingly plausible.

The book begins in the early 1960s, as we meet the psychiatrists, intelligence officers, criminals and dupes who will carry out the Kennedy assassination. Mafia leaders, incensed by the Kennedy brothers' aggressive prosecution of their activities, and CIA men, equally incensed by JFK's failure to back the overthrow of Castro, conspire to have the president whacked. They find the perfect patsy in Lee Harvey Oswald, an early subject of a secret CIA mind control program. Two psychiatrists have discovered how to hypnotically create multiple personalities in their subjects and program them to obey commands when code phrases are spoken (readers of classic spy thrillers will be reminded of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate and Walter Wager's Telefon). Meanwhile, a sexy British nightclub singer named Debbie Rawlins is recruited and programmed--her gig as a travelling entertainer for military personnel providing a convenient cover for her programmed personality's more lethal vocation.

The narrative jumps ahead several years as the two psychiatrists, wanting to get away from the heat of Congressional investigations, media attention and public suspicion that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy, relocate to a house in the northern English countryside to lay low and continue their research. But when two suspicious British MI6 agents break into the house of their CIA handler they discover incriminating papers connecting the doctors to the assassination program. Being shady operators, the MI6 men take full advantage of the situation by blackmailing the American psychiatrists into employing their hypnotic assassins to take out some troublesome IRA leaders in nearby Northern Ireland. So a corporal named Walker is recruited and programmed for the hits, and Debbie Rawlins is reactivated.

The story finally gets a clear protagonist when an MI6 agent named James Boyd is asked to investigate a psychiatrist's report of a patient who is having dreams about political murders that he should have no way of knowing about.  It seems that the patient (Walker) is experiencing a mental breakdown, as memories of the hits performed under his alter ego begin to leak into his daily life via disturbing dreams. Boyd's sleuthing uncovers some disturbing facts about both Walker and Rawlins, the psychiatrists who programmed them, their connections to the MKUltra assassination program and the IRA hits. What are CIA assassin programmers doing in the UK, and why are they having people offed for MI6?

Boyd is faced with a moral dilemma: does he go along with his superiors' desire to bury the scandal in the interest of transatlantic spook relations, or does he seek justice for the pawns of the hypno-assassin program whose lives they ruined? The story has the sort of cynical ending that you find in a lot of British spy fiction, which you'll never get in more popular spy fiction novels but no doubt has more resemblance to the realities of shadow warfare. Anyone imagining that shadow warfare is some kind of morality play, where there are clear good guys and bad guys and the former always win, is surely living in a fantasy world!

While the set up of this story is excellent, the execution was a bit off. The narrative is very disjointed in the first half; it jumps from location to location, introducing characters and plot threads that don't seem connected. It's hard to maintain any narrative tension when you're not sure who the protagonist is and you're bouncing around every page or two, though this gets better in the second half as Boyd's investigation becomes the focus. My other complaint is that the story lacks action and intensity; it's a bit too political and cerebral, more John le Carré than Jack Higgins, which is not how I prefer my spy thrillers. There were a few short, intense scenes of violence and a bit of shadow operating, but not enough for my liking.

I don't know if this is typical of Allbeury, but for now I'll put him in the category of interesting authors who are worth reading further when I'm in the mood for less pulpy spy fiction.

Get a copy of Pay Any Price here.

Black Heart

Eric Van Lustbader stormed onto the bestseller charts in 1980 with the publication of The Ninja, a dark, sophisticated, pulpy thriller that perfectly anticipated the obsession with ninjas and all things Japanese in the 1980s. With that novel, Van Lustbader established the elements of a formula that he would cash in on for many years: a Western protagonist schooled in Eastern martial arts, a sinister super-assassin from the East, a global conspiracy rooted in historical events spanning East and West, Eastern mysticism and mythology, martial arts violence, explicit sex, dark psychology, intense romance, and a melodramatic writing style that tries to elevate all of this to high literature. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for this formula.

Van Lustbader's second novel in this vein, Black Heart, published in 1983, is perhaps his  most ambitious. It's a very long (700 pages), complex narrative with numerous threads and characters that span Cambodia in the early 1960s to the USA in the early 1980s, by way of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. It begins with the assassination of the governor of New York during the throes of sexual passion by a mystic assassin named Khieu. It so happens that the close friend and political advisor of the victim is a man named Tracy Richter, an ex-Special Forces soldier and ex-member of a clandestine outfit called "the foundation". When Richter is informed that the foundation suspects the governor didn't die of a heart attack but was in fact assassinated, he takes it upon himself to solve the mystery and track down the culprit.

As the story unfolds, we learn that there's a sinister network call the "angka" originating with U.S. Special Forces in the Cambodian jungle that by the early 1980s has infiltrated the highest corridors of power in D.C. Among the angka's leaders are the head of  a corporation that develops advanced weapons systems, a senator who is a leading presidential candidate and hardline anti-terrorist, and the director of the CIA. These men are involved in an all-too-plausible conspiracy: secretly sponsoring terrorist attacks around the world in an effort to come to power on an aggressive anti-terrorist platform. They also have connections to Richter, the foundation, and various other players in a way that makes everything very personal.

The main character of this tale is really the assassin Khieu; in addition to his lethal present-day operations as an assassin for the angka, we get many flashbacks to his experiences in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's brutal rise to power. Van Lustbader explores how a man who began as a humble Buddhist with humanitarian ideals could turn into a murderous revolutionary and finally an almost inhuman mystical assassin. It's an intriguing look into the "black heart" of his antagonist—one of Van Lustbader's main strengths as a writer.

By the last quarter of the book there are so many plot threads running that you almost need a spreadsheet to keep track of them—old vendettas, political agendas, terrorist plots, criminal enterprises, police investigations, romantic dramas, spiritual traumas, family honor—but they all converge toward the end in a suitably dark, violent and mystical climax.

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel for the student of shadow warfare is how Van Lustbader anticipates the "War on Terror" 20 years in advance. The senator's plan to attack terrorists worldwide, invade Islamic countries, take their oil and ensure America's global dominance sounds eerily similar to the program that "neoconservatives" would roll out after 9/11/2001. Black Heart offers a neocon conspiracy that will make "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy theorists nod in understanding. As the senator muses:

His smile widened now as he thought of 31 August and Macomber's plan. Because of that, there would be no opposition to him at all. By then America would have had its first taste of a terrorist assault on its home soil and it would mobilize.

Gottschalk rejoiced, not only for himself but for the entire country. It was just like the days before America entered World War II: it took great hardship and some loss of life for the sleeping giant to be awakened. But once aroused, Gottschalk knew, no nation on earth could stand before her. Let the terrorists beware. As of this night, their days are numbered. Attacked on its own soil, America could then send out its strike forces into the Middle East, the oil-rich nations of the Gulf, the obliteration of the known terrorist camps, the destruction of already shaky Islamic governments. Oil for the cities of America and, with it, an end to the Soviet Union's stranglehold on much of the world.

In many ways this novel is a re-telling of The Ninja, with a Cambodia/Vietnam War backstory instead of a Japan/World War II one, the dramatic opening assassination of a VIP, the discovery by the shadow operator protagonist of foul play involving an Eastern killing technique, the detective work with a gruff New York cop to identify the assassin, the uncovering of a vast conspiracy by Western industrialists and politicians, the love interest who gets caught up in the plot, the twisted mysticism, horrific violence and extreme sexuality of the villains. Like I said, this was Van Lustbader's formula in the 1980s—it's ambitious, intense stuff, though at times over-written, implausible, melodramatic and pornographic. He easily could have trimmed a couple hundred pages off this novel and made it a tighter read, but in an era when Stephen King, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy were at the top of the bestseller charts, these fat, complex thrillers were all the rage. And once in a while, if they're well done, they're fun to read. Black Heart is well done; it's 1980s Van Lustbader at his most epic. If the style is to your taste, you should enjoy this novel.

Get a copy of Black Heart here.

Flashpoint

Flashpoint is yet another obscure thriller from the 1970s remembered only because it was made into a film--a 1984 adaptation starring Kris Kristoffersen which, I vaguely recall, was quite good.

This novel is intriguing in the way it connects two fronts of the Shadow War that are usually distinct: the Border War and the Assassin War. The protagonists, Logan and Ernie, are two good ol' boy Texas border patrolmen who enjoy nothing better than patrolling the very desolate "section 7" of the U.S.-Mexico border in their jeeps, tracking down illegals across the desert and taking them back to Mexico. They don't do this out of any spite toward the illegals, but simply for the challenge, solitude and outdoor adventure the job affords them. Both men are military veterans with experience operating in dangerous territory--Ernie in Korea and Logan as a Green Beret in 'Nam--and patrolling the Mexican border is a good peacetime test of their skills. Author La Fountaine does a good job of fleshing out their backgrounds and motivating their behavior; while they may be obnoxious "bubbas" at times who like to get drunk and visit Mexican whorehouses in their spare time, they are full of life and love adventure in a way you can't help but respect.

As the story opens, the patrolmen learn that a new high tech border security system is going to be implemented in their region, which would turn these border cowboys into glorified desk jockeys, watching for beeping lights on computer screens instead of riding out under the sun looking for "Indians" to apprehend. This puts them in a depressed and desperate state of mind, but that soon changes when Logan, taking a shortcut through an untravelled desert wash, discovers a crashed jeep buried deep in the sand. Digging it out, he finds a skeleton and a box full of cash--$850,000 in small, sequentially numbered bills. At this point the novel becomes a detective story, as Logan and Ernie try to discover the identity of the driver, the source of the cash, and whether it is safe to spend it without alerting authorities.

Things soon become even more confusing--and deadly--as shadowy forces and corrupt players converge on the patrolmen's turf. People connected to the cash are being killed off, and the patrolmen feel the noose tightening around them. Should they take the money and run for the border, or play it cool and deny everything? Who exactly is looking for the money, and why? Who can they trust? What was a jeep doing loaded with cash in the south Texas desert, who was the mysterious driver, and why is someone willing to kill anyone who knows anything about them? Everything is answered in the final pages, as the narrative gets increasingly dark, violent and desperate and a sinister conspiracy is revealed. While some of the plot developments seemed a little far-fetched, I think the shock ending was appropriate and should come as no surprise to veteran Shadow Warriors. 

Flashpoint is one of those cynical, paranoid, pessimistic stories that could only have been written in the 1970s--a period I love because I think it dealt more realistically with the nature of society and humanity than what came before or after. It was a unique era, in the wake of the 1960s, when Americans were free to be simultaneously politically incorrect, sexually liberated, and very cynical of the powers that be. Logan expresses the spirit of the times well when, after Ernie denies that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, responds:

"Ernie," Logan cried in anger, "how can you say that after all the shit that's come out about Watergate and the CIA and the FBI and the assassination plots over the world? How can you still say that?"

Everything that happens subsequently in the story only vindicates Logan's cynicism. If you enjoy novels like Six Days of the Condor and films like Parallax View, where ordinary people are caught up in the machinations of sinister forces that go right to the top of the power structure--which is revealed to be hopelessly corrupt--you should add Flashpoint to your reading list. This book is a good reminder that the Shadow War is not just a war on the ground between spies, criminals and covert operators, but a war of the mind against the vast apparatus of lies and illusions that daytime society runs on.

While I wouldn't call La Fountaine a great writer, and some of the plot twists were a little implausible, overall he's spun a very compelling tale here that kept me turning the pages until the end. If you like good old adventure thrillers with a heavy dose of 1970s paranoia and political intrigue, you should enjoy this as much as I did.

Get a copy of Flashpoint here.