Traitor
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A stunning terror bombing strikes a research facility in France, a much-admired African-American general is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Pentagon staff officer John Reynolds finds an old friend--now an influential lobbyist--drunk and fearful. In short order, Reynolds must face a car bombing at his front door, his girlfriend's murder, and the wrath of a retired Green Beret general as scarred as he is inexplicably wealthy. Struggling to behave honorably--and to resist a beauty as corrupt as any human being on earth--Reynolds finds himself at the center of an international plot to sell the Pentagon the most expensive fighter aircraft in history . . . even though the weapon may not work. In an homage to the great noir fiction of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain, Ralph Peters has written the most rapid-fire, hard-hitting novel of his career--a story of Washington corruption that could have been lifted from today's headlines.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I do not imagine that a one-man crusade disguised as a thriller can change much," writes career soldier turned bestselling author Peters (The War in 2020, etc.) in an afterword to his knowing, deeply involving new thriller. Maybe not, but everybody inside the Beltway who deals with (or votes on) defense budget issues should read this beautifully crafted story about a man of principle trying against all odds to do the right thing. Lt. Col. John Reynolds is "one of a legion of staff officers sweating blood to keep an underfunded Army alive." Reynolds will be faced with even more savage budget cuts if a project called NFGB (Next Generation Fighter Bomber) gets the approval for which its corporate sponsor, Macon-Bolt Industries, is lobbying so hard. Two of Reynolds's old army buddies--an African-American general and an officer turned lobbyist for Macon-Bolt--die suddenly and suspiciously. When his live-in ladyfriend, singer Tish O'Malley, is apparently killed by a car bomb, Reynolds begins to realize his own life has somehow become linked with the fate of NGFB. In addition to superb scenes of action, there are many worthy opponents here, notably a sharply sketched military madman destroying pets and works of art for dramatic effect, and a pair of ruthless French agents limited only by their own country's budgetary problems. But the real villain of this smartly effective thriller with a message is a giant military-industrial-political complex determined to suck up as much public money it can while people like Reynolds (and Peters) nip at its heel.
