Notes-review “The Watchmen” Brian Freemantle 7/15/14A high suspense conspiracy novel with a great deal of intricate actions by a large cast of characters divided between the good guys attempting to find and corral a large cast of bad guys who must first be identified and have their actions pred...
A tense revenge thriller - Jack Mason, once Russia's most successful CIA embedded traitor, has spent the last fifteen years in a penitentiary planning his vengeance on the defector who exposed him. Former KGB Colonel Dimitri Sobell has made a life for himself in America. Until he gets an official...
When rumors reach Whitehall that a top Russian agent and his wife are about to defect to the Yanks in Japan, Charlie Muffin is sent to check it out. A top-notch novel of suspense and international intrigue, featuring the "Columbo" of British spies.
The new thriller from the master storyteller - Harvey Jordan is The Namedropper, a multi-millionaire who steals other people's identities to strip them of their assets. Following an ill-judged affair, Jordan finds himself cited in a divorce action by one Alfred Appleton, as well as being sued for...
On-the-run spy Charlie Muffin investigates the destruction of an ocean linerThey call Charlie Muffin a traitor. He has been on the run ever since the blow-up in Berlin, when British intelligence declared him obsolete and tried to kill him. Charlie outsmarted them then, and he has done so ever sin...
On the eve of a vital CIA assignment, an agent's hesitation leads him to the brink of disaster His grandfather was a lawman too. That's how Charles O'Farrell rationalizes his work. He keeps a picture of his ancestor by his bed, a faded sepia portrait of a short, plain-looking man made remarkable ...
Russia is falling apart. The economy is in shambles, and the police hold very little power. On the brink of chaos, only organized crime gets results; the Russian mafia controls the streets, the militia, maybe even the government. And as the families battle for supremacy, the embattled boss of bos...
A Mafia murder in Washington, D.C., is unusual enough, but when the corpse is a Russian diplomat, fear ripples around the world. Nail-biting, authentic forensic detail, the sleazy atmosphere of Moscow's underworld, a web of tangled political motives, and two of the most charismatic investigators ...
1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations. Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as ...
Specific details were limited by the need to agree to bargaining arrangements and the amount of the bounty payment with other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and Italy. Al Aswamy had already disclosed the extent of Iranian financial, matériel, and manpower support to Al Qaeda in Mali, ...
It was two days after the ceremony, when they were packing for London, that he realized some had been stolen. His control over Nikolai had diminished as Endelman’s had grown, and Josef was anxious not to make an unfounded accusation that would allow Nikolai another opportunity for contempt. Three...
She spat out that she hated him. He said he didn’t believe her and she screamed back that she didn’t give a fuck what he believed: that all she wanted to do was get back to Cyprus. He’d reached out to touch her, but she’d shrugged him away, not wanting even the slightest physical contact. “You’re...
Jane sipped her wine reflectively. ‘Not good. We could only challenge the total illogicality of Straughan leaving provable records of his dealing with an FSB double, and Monsford threw that right back at us, demanding a reasonable alternative for what his evidence showed, which we didn’t have. St...
Charlie refused, at first, to believe he couldn’t make her change her mind but as she had that night in the rooftop restaurant with its view of Moscow Natalia refused even to let him explain, demanding – with increasing anger – that he shouldn’t make things any more difficult for her than they al...
Kurnov allowed himself to be carried in the crowd toward the waiting coaches, but carefully avoided contact with everyone around him. His fame within Russia assured his superiority and no one challenged his insistence upon a seat by himself, at the rear of the bus. The first stop was at Berlin’s ...
Which she’d always known she did and dreamed about and all she’d thought about from the day he’d left her in Moscow and made even more ridiculous what had happened the previous night. Of course she was frightened: would be, for weeks and months and years. But that wasn’t sufficient reason for wha...
By the time they reached the bar on the Rue du Port, Charlie had walked off and drunk off most of the anger. ‘You’re wrong, you know. All of you,’ he insisted. ‘So you keep saying,’ reminded Levy. Like its name suggested it was a port workers’ bar, with no service, so the Israeli carried the bran...
Some uniformed Russian militia officers had arrived to supplement the British security cordon, keeping the pedestrian door clear. They weren’t doing anything, though, to prevent the television cameramen and photographers from taking pictures, and Charlie told his taxi driver to continue on ...
Alice could imagine Jane lying back in the bath, soaking. ‘I’m leaving some pants outside the door. A sweater. And some underwear.’ ‘That’s kind.’ ‘We’re about the same size.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I’m going to get cleaned up myself now. Get ready to go.’ ‘All right.’ Still relaxed. Alice had run her own bath ...
1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations. Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as ...
Finally, thankfully, he began to draw on the interrogation resistance in which he had done so well in training – and which had been further refined during those last, unorthodox sessions – and to concentrate upon behaving professionally. He’d faltered, admittedly: initially forgotten everything h...
The glasses were out, the wine opened, the flowers displayed, a soft, beguiling orchestral movement already playing. All so welcoming: welcoming and loving and intimate. All so false. Reimann held her close to him – although careful again, not too tightly – and she made herself hold him close in ...
And it wasn’t because of his fruitless vigil in the botanical garden the night before. It still had to be more, much more, than a 50 percent chance that Natalia had delivered the newspaper signal, in the way only he’d recognize, to their special dead-letter drop. But the alternative, the fear tha...
Charlie sat relaxed in the enormous office, aware of Wilberforce’s eyes upon him, his face masked against any emotion. Several times the Director stopped during the account, but Charlie’s complete lack of response kept forcing him into further details. ‘That’s it,’ completed Cuthbertson, at last....
Necessarily going back to Lesnaya to shower, shave and change—and even then make a telephone call—delayed him, but Charlie wouldn’t anyway have arrived at the gardens ahead of Natalia. She had never been operational, walking dark streets and even darker alleys; couldn’t instinctively recognize th...
It is timed in months rather than weeks: sometimes years rather than months. By the early 1980s international Western banks and financiers confronted a nightmare. To explore mineral discoveries that never materialized and oil deposits that never actually brought black gold bubbling from the groun...
All-or any-of which was totally alien to Olga Melnik’s until now carefully structured and even more carefully disaster-avoided career. She wasn’t, of course, frightened of being sucked down. Olga Melnik wasn’t the sort of person to sink beneath the first ripples of uncertainties. She just needed ...
From Tokyo there were frozen specimens of the current bird flu virus, as well as quite separate – and unexpected – samples of SARS from the masked palm civet cat, the wild animal species considered a culinary delicacy in China, and suspected of being the source of a renewed but so far limited out...
He contradicted Kosov’s announcement that they would resume at once the questioning of Yezhov in his cell, insisting instead that any further interviews had to be in a much larger interrogation room in which the man might feel less constrained and in which Valentina could wait until they were rea...
Charlie guessed it must be mid-morning when they let him empty his bucket, but without any daylight it was difficult to judge. He shuffled across the basement, one hand at his trousers, the other through the wire grip of the pail, with Jackson leading and two men behind. It was a small toilet, ob...
And disastrously delayed the identification of John Willick. Their mistake – which they were intended by Moscow to make – was to try to combine the name supposedly remembered by Yevgennie Levin with the provable date and transfer intentionally disclosed by Sergei Kapalet. Cots were moved into the...