Pinpoint
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
France 1961. Operation Ponctuelle: the name given to top level assassinations of Gaullist Ministers. Two men lie in wait in a basement garage underneath the Boulevard St. Germain for the Minister of Special Affairs, their aim to kidnap their target and use him as a bargaining chip in the internecine strife that is tearing France apart. All goes to plan until one of the men reveals his true nature. First the four bodyguards die, then the Minister, then his girlfriend, whose tip off made the operation possible. The other man looks on in horror as a monster is born, a killer more ruthless than all the other players in the deadly war. Soon the fragmented security services are on the look out for the assassin, codenamed Diderot. But in the boiler room paranoia all are fair game, as the police, the army and top secret Maurice Bureau rip each other apart in the search for Diderot. Only an Englishman holds the threads which will unravel the enigma that is Diderot. But for Harry Metcalfe, differing motives of love, friendship and revenge mean that the job in hand is a difficult one, and the chances of his survival in the balancing act even slimmer.; Gripping espionage thriller from the man hailed as the next Frederick Forsyth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Terrorist and counter-terrorist mayhem in 1961 Paris beat at the brutal heart of this relentlessly paced thriller from pseudonymous British author Brown (Ringmain; The Double Tenth). Dissatisfied with de Gaulle's handling of the Algerian crisis and opposed to any form of Algerian independence, French officers organized into the Secret Army Organization (OAS) and plotted against the general's government. When Phillipe de Guy-Montbron and his adopted brother, Paul Vernet, assassinate the French Minister of Special Affairs, a bewildering array of French national security agencies-from upper-class spies to hired thugs-goes after the pair. As Montbron uses the killing to gain access to the inner circle of the OAS, two separate armies of government agents spy on him, and on each other, until their actions take on a vicious life of their own. The result makes for a hard-boiled thriller that begins with overtones of The Day of the Jackal and ends with echoes of The Night of the Generals. In between, the novel stakes out its own territory, chronicling a savage battle between rival agencies that do more damage to each other than to the enemy as they compete to find and kill Montbron. Little is what it seems here, except the clarity of Brown's prose, which feeds readers esoteric background lore while speeding toward its explosive climax. This is the kind of novel that Forsyth used to write: swift, informative and sardonic, with scenes of violence that, while never overindulged, will make readers wince.
