A fiery explosion shatters a laboratory building in Paris. Among the dead is Emile Chambord, one of the leaders in the global race to create a molecular - or DNA - computer. Unfortunately, Professor Chambord kept the details of his work secret, and his notes were apparently destroyed in the fire. Then suddenly US fighter jets disappear from radar screens for a full five minutes and there's no explanation; utilities cease to function; and all telecommunications abruptly stop, with devastating consequences. This is not the work of a clever hacker - only the enormous power and speed of a DNA computer could have caused such havoc.Covert-One agent Jon Smith flies to Paris to investigate. Following a trail that leads him across two continents, he uncovers a web of deception that threatens to re-shape the world for ever...
Inver Brass: a group of high-minded and high-placed intellectuals. They see a monstrous threat to the country in Hoover's unethical use of his scandal-ridden private files. And so they decide to do away with him - quietly, efficiently, with no hint of impropriety. Until bestselling thriller writer Peter Chancellor stumbles onto information that makes his previous books look like harmless fairy tales.Now Chancellor and Inver Brass are on a deadly collision course, spiralling across the globe in an ever-widening arc of violence and terror. They are hurtling towards a showdown that will rip Washington's intelligence community apart, leaving only one damning document to survive: The Chancellor Manuscript...
One might think that time would have taken its toll on the crusty, disgruntled Soviet dinosaurs who want to return Russia to its Communist glory days, but evidently not. Larkin, helming Ludlum's Covert One series, has dreamed up a new bunch of hard-liners, armed with HYDRA, a designer poison that singles out and kills victims based on DNA. With HYDRA having dispatched numerous U.S. and allied intelligence agents, Russian President Viktor Dudarev is poised to launch Operation ZHUKOV, a takeover strike against Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and half of Ukraine. Leading a covert investigation of HYDRA is series regular Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith, U.S. Army molecular biologist and chief operative of supersecret spy agency Covert One. There's nothing particularly new—HYDRA is an unwieldy weapon (it must be tailor-made for each victim), and super-sleuth Jon spends far too much time ferreting out information that readers have known for hundreds of pages. The threat of a Russian takeover of lost territory may not raise the temperature high enough, and various subplots, such as an attempted assassination of the U.S. president, don't amount to much. There are plenty of excellent shoot-outs, but Larkin's last outing, The Lazarus Vendetta, was far more cutting edge. (On sale Aug. 1)
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Although Larkin is the actual author of this novel, "Robert Ludlum" novels now include 26 books, the latter ones, of course, written after his death but in the strong tradition of the novels he wrote himself. This new one falls in the Covert-One Novel series, now numbering six; Larkin also wrote The Lazarus Vendetta (2004), also part of this series. Moscow is the setting, and Larkin occasionally uses Russian expressions to remind readers of the locale. But like other tales of espionage, the action spans the globe, here including Prague; several cities in the Ukraine; other Russian cities; Washington, D.C.; Baghdad; Dresden; and Berlin. The plot concerns a biological weapon called HYDRA, "the ultimate, precision-guided silent killer." Months of preparation have gone into selecting targets for the first HYDRA variants and then finding ways to deliver them undetected to the chosen victims. Russia's aim is to kill America's most competent intelligence analysts. There's plenty of action here and some suspense, but don't the good guys always prevail in the end? George Cohen
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