From Publishers Weekly
Despite a myriad of subplots and characters, Herman's latest intricately woven, grandly schemed techno-melodrama (after Against All Enemies) delivers solid entertainment with nary a hitch. Set in 2002, it continues the travails of Madeline (Maddy) Turner, introduced in Power Curve. Having succeeded her husband after his assassination, Maddy, a highly capable though emotionally vulnerable mother of two, has become the first woman president of the U.S. Trouble is brewing in Russia as Mikhail Vashin, a wealthy megalomaniac Mafiya powerbroker, plots to use Germany as his unwitting ally in a scheme to make Poland the center for international traffic in drugs, sex, money laundering and contraband military technology. When it becomes obvious there is skullduggery afoot, savvy President Turner sends ranking Air Force General Robert Bender to Poland as ambassador. On the domestic front, during a visit to New Mexico where her 14-year-old son is in military school, Maddy becomes infatuated with General Matt Pontowski, the dashing pilot who is the father of her son's roommate. Because she plans to mount her own campaign to become her party's first official female presidential candidate, however, Maddy accepts the reality that she must put her feminine yearning aside. After Matt is sent to train Polish pilots, Ambassador Bender is assassinated and Maddy's old political nemesis, Senator Leland, blackmails her into appointing Matt's avowed enemy to fill the vacancy. Orchestrated against the counter-perils of innocent teenagers who become the targets of the Russian mob, tension builds inside the guarded meeting rooms of the White House. Herman deftly negotiates murderous chicanery, political hanky-panky, gripping air combat and steamy sex in a sweeping political epic of post-Cold War power struggles. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Herman's well-received Power Curve (1997) showed Madeline O'Keith Turner inheriting the Oval Office when the president died. Now its in the early years of the next century, when Maddy's big problem is Russias crime cartel, the Mafiya, and its leader, Mikhail Vashin. The vastly wealthy Vashin, who thinks nothing of having a naked girl thrown down a 30-story elevator shaft, has organized all the crime families and essentially taken over the government, so that the US is dealing with criminal political leaders. Now all Europe seems ready to fall under the cartel's yoke. What's worse, Yaponetz, a Russian godfather of crime doing time in a US federal prison, is organizing a terrifically effective crime family here. What to do with him? Maddy suggests that America trade him to Russia . . . for a nuke. The Russians now want Poland back, but so does Germany. War looks imminent, and the author (a former Air Force pilot) flaunts his skills describing fighter-jet action at high altitudes. Meanwhile, Maddy has her own problems in Washington as power forces shift beneath her feet. With Elizabeth Dole making presidential waves, and Hillary Rodham Clinton sniffing at New York's senatorial seat, the country seems ready for a novel about women in power. Herman has wisely left room for a trilogy. --
Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
