Triple Trap
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A spy-vs.-spy thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author. “Hallahan weaves a very effective web. . . . The novel rockets along” (Chicago Tribune).
Intelligence operative Charlie Brewer has been a lone wolf since he took the fall for the CIA in a previous case. But now the official moles need him again, and though there’s no love lost, Brewer can’t resist a challenge as big as this. The target: a Soviet superspy posing as Eric Marten, a Swiss businessman with an opulent lifestyle who lives in a castle, collects art, and buys fabulous jewelry for his girlfriends. However, Eric Marten is the greatest international smugger in history. He can snatch virtually any piece of US technology for his Soviet bosses. Thanks to Marten’s diabolical genius, whole cases of computer parts disappear right from under the eyes of veteran CIA agents; blueprints for top-secret American weapons end up at the Kremlin. Marten has to be stopped. But the CIA doesn’t know his real name, much less who he is or how to catch him. It’s up to Brewer—and Marten knows it.
“[Hallahan at his brisk best] . . . The action is lean and satisfying with a formidably tenacious hero, a charismatic post-glasnost villain, some clever spy puzzles and just the right dash of Le Carré-inspired cynicism.” —Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Edgar-winner Hallahan ( Catch Me: Kill Me and Foxcatcher ) attempts to grapple, in fiction, with serious breaches of national security--the Soviet procurement of American high-tech secrets. Told with little style or humor, his novel takes shape as a plot in search of characters. When two agents lose yet another piece of American high-tech hardware to Soviet smugglers, Charlie Brewer is called in to protect the Cassandra project, a hardware/software package designed to enhance the nation's defensive computer systems. Early in his investigation, Brewer learns that the rash of thefts is the work of one brilliant man. By blackmailing disreputable American defense contractors and falsifying elaborate paper trails, Emil Gogol has managed to steal the latest developments in American defense technology. Arrogant and disdainful of his bureaucratic superiors, he knows that seizing the Cassandra project could be his ultimate coup. Failure, on the other hand, would ruin him. Just as Gogol prepares to make the heist, Brewer learns of his scheme. Though it is carefully thought out and tightly plotted, the novel's weak characterizations, particularly of the two central figures, fail to make this a convincing, let alone compelling, work of fiction.
