From Amazon.com
Morley is an American agent whose close call with death resulted from his attempt to penetrate powerful Belgian government connections to the international narcotics trade. Still convalescing, he defies his bosses in the unnamed bureau and returns to Brussels to complete his mission, resolved to find out who betrayed him. Morley wants to question Cailleau, a master marionette maker involved in smuggling people across national borders, about a team of international terrorists rumored to be plotting an assassination attempt on officials of the European Economic Commission. Cailleau is killed before Morley can get to him, and the mysterious woman who was his assistant and artistic muse flees before either Morley or the forces ranged against him can silence her permanently.
Intricately plotted and carefully developed, this international spy thriller offers a deep look into a man whose youthful illusions were shattered by what he did and saw in another war in another country. A burned-out espionage veteran, he goes on with his work in the absence of a compelling reason to stop. Like Smiley in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, he no longer questions why he keeps going, he just does. In one of the book's most powerful scenes, he matches wits with a young Arab terrorist whose own idealism on behalf of his cause offers a strong counterpoint to Morley's exhausted patriotism; in another scene, he encounters an old adversary, a Russian agent with whom he finds he has more in common than he does with his own countrymen. The authors Frank M. Robinson and Paul Hull paint a gray, cold, drizzling portrait of Brussels, which all but ensures that readers without a compelling reason to go there will erase it from their future itineraries. Moody, evocative, and gritty, this is an unsentimental yet quietly suspenseful read. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Neal Morley, the protagonist of this gritty, claustrophobic thriller, is a Vietnam vet and operative for a U.S. government agency known as "the Bureau." He is sent to Brussels from London to interview over-the-hill puppeteer Serge Cailleau, who has smuggled six, perhaps seven, terrorists into Belgium to attack an upcoming European Union meeting. When the puppeteer is killed during a performance, Morley's only lead is Bernadette, the woman who played one of Cailleau's life-sized marionettes. But Morley isn't the man he was six months ago, when he suffered a near-fatal beating while breaking up a drug ring. He's slower, warier, jumpier and conscious of his weaknesses and of his mistakes. Moreover, neither the Bureau nor the local police are sure he can handle the job, particularly since they know that he has his own personal agenda?to find the paymaster behind the drug ring, a man whom everyone maintains does not exist. Morley's road to revenge is paved with betrayals, botched interrogations, an uneasy comradeship with his Soviet counterpart and violence born of fear and frustration. Yet thanks to sharp, evocative writing, his story remains, at heart, a tale of character?of Morley's moral confusion. The obligatory romance is handled with skill, the final twist isn't gratuitous, and it all adds up to one tough spy thriller.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.