From Publishers Weekly
The latest in Egleton's Peter Ashton series (A Lethal Involvement, etc.) about hugger-mugger in and around Britain's SIS is rich in character and energetically plotted, quick-cutting back and forth between England, Russia, Finland and America. In the jolting beginning, a British Intelligence safe house is blown in a big way: three agents are slaughtered and one disappears?along with a Cuban-American informant. Ashton's wife, Harriet, finds the bodies and is briefly a suspect, as are many others: Muslim extremists, Moscow Mafiozniki, Cuban drug dealers and a few plain nasty crooks. Readers will recognize some old favorites: the SIS chief right out of P.G. Wodehouse; Peter's steely ex-lover, determined to become the first female head of SIS; Peter's past and current nemesis, a brutal ex-KGB general; the stuffy Admin mandarin known as "the officer in charge of paperclips." Sometimes the intramural maneuvering is as much fun as the outside action. Egleton's dry powers of observation are as effective in describing the Director General's posh office as evoking a hole-in-the-wall beauty parlor. The plotting feels like a combination of John le Carre and Elmore Leonard: a bit over the top, maybe, but compulsive, propulsive reading nonetheless.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Rogue SIS agent Peter Ashton becomes involved in a case that takes him from a multiple murder at a Yorkshire safe house to a dangerous confrontation in Moscow with his old nemesis, Russian agent Pavel Trilisser, and, finally, to northern Virginia and a head-to-head clash with a crazed perpetrator who's part of a plot to destroy the world economy. The multiple murder sets off a secret manhunt for an SIS informer known only as Inigo, who is linked to $5 million in missing diamonds. Ashton uncovers tenuous leads to Cuban thugs, Islamic radicals, the CIA, a gang of counterfeiters, and the Russian KGB, but it takes his signature disregard of the rules of espionage to piece it all together. Egleton is one of the few true masters of espionage left working the old turf, and his latest is one of his best.
Emily Melton
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
