The Firefly
A Novel
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
At midnight, in a secret medical clinic in Washington, D.C., two foreign doctors and their team are completing plastic surgery on an anonymous client who is changing the appearance of his face, among other things. After the procedure, the client begins to stir-and suddenly the operating room erupts in violence and the clinic is ablaze.
Washington police conduct an arson investigation, with inconclusive results. But one tantalizing fragment of evidence suggests that a terrorist bombing may be imminent. The presidential inauguration is quickly approaching and Washington's police, fire, intelligence, military, federal, and White House security teams are making frantic preparations. Because of the strain on manpower, retired Secret Service agent Swamp Morgan is recalled to active duty. His task: investigate the incineration of the medical clinic as a "firefly"- Washington-speak for something that looks like a threat but isn't.
As Swamp begins what he thinks is a routine check-and-dismiss, the clinic's missing client begins preparations for his mission: to launch an attack on the American government - a decapitation strike intended to wipe out both the outgoing and incoming administrations. As the crucial day approaches, Swamp, the only agent to take the firefly seriously, must operate alone as the clock clicks down to a breathtaking finale.
Filled with brilliant twists and turns and heart-in-your throat suspense, Firefly offers first class entertainment from beginning to end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trust Deutermann (Darkside, etc.), veteran thriller writer and former longtime government employee, to produce what appears to be the first major action novel set inside the Department of Homeland Security. It's full of all the requisite paranoia, frustration and rivalry, and brings the acronym count to new highs. When Swamp (for "Swamp Thing") Morgan a retired Secret Service agent sucked back into the latest crisis asks why a top Secret Service man at the White House is so upset by Morgan's investigation into what appears to be a "firefly" a short-lived, unimportant threat female colleague Lucy VanMetre replies, "Because he sees OSI's decision to proceed with it as a direct criticism of PRU. This isn't about the firefly anymore. It's all about an infringement of PRU's charter within DHS." Readers able to get through passages like that without laughing will probably enjoy (and be able to follow) the twists and turns of this complicated, often lumpy story. Just days before the inauguration of a new president in 2004, Swamp, a huge man with a Neanderthal visage that hides a shrewd brain, is put in nominal charge of an investigation into a fire at a Washington, D.C., plastic surgery clinic where, at night, foreign visitors have been gradually altering their appearances. Is one of them planning an attack on the new president? Swamp thinks so, but he meets high-level resistance at every turn especially from Lucy, a sleek, tough blonde who at one point threatens Swamp with a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay, where 300 individuals from the Washington area are being held in "protective custody." On the day of the inauguration, a mortar strike on the Capitol is only the beginning of a multi-twist finale. Perhaps this isn't the easiest of reads, but nobody can accuse Deutermann of not being timely.
