Supernotes
A Thriller
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- ¥1,300
発行者による作品情報
In the Cambodian hinterlands, a lone Western prisoner suffers through a hot, muddy, interminable sentence. Wasted by repeated torture, lack of sleep, malnutrition, and psychotropic drugs, he has been abandoned. His years of exemplary service to his government mean nothing. No one is coming for him.
This is Agent Kasper, a man with a staggering résumé: commercial airline pilot, firearms expert, highly accomplished practitioner of several of the martial arts, a secret agent par excellence. It is this incredible competence that will be his undoing. While investigating Mafia money laundering in Phnom Penh, Kasper is approached by the CIA to track down the source of the so-called supernotes—illegal U.S. banknotes counterfeited so perfectly that they are undetectable, even by sophisticated machines—that are flooding Southeast Asia. With patience, skill, and courage, Kasper uncovers the explosive secret behind them and is badly burned by the truth.
Meanwhile, back in Rome, a sharp, scrappy lawyer named Barbara Belli has been hired by Kasper’s family to work for his release. She has contacts in the foreign ministry, and while officials make sweeping claims about moving heaven and earth, nothing happens. It’s more than just creaking bureaucracy. Kasper has really pissed off the wrong people.
Based on true events in the life of a former spy, Kasper’s journey makes for a shocking and spellbinding page-turner of petty corruption, high-level betrayal, and state secrets so powerful that governments will protect them by any means.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this confusing based-on-a-true-story thriller from Kasper, a former operative of the Italian intelligence services and the CIA, and Italian journalist Carletti, a man with the code name Kasper "secret agent, spy, double-oh-seven, agent provocateur, imposter" finds himself detained at the Prey Sar Correctional Center near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2009. For the prisoner, "Prey Sar is the place of no return." Kasper has been investigating the supernotes of the title: "counterfeit U.S. bank notes, hundred-dollar bills, very high quality, practically perfect." He has clearly rubbed someone the wrong way to end up in Prey Sar, though he does have allies on the outside. In Rome, lawyer Barbara Belli is working on his release and learning of Kasper's shadowy past. The book provides a fascinating peek behind the curtain of today's global intelligence community, but the back-and-forth narrative essentially destroys the story's momentum.
