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Mystery/Thriller Book ReviewsPage Two of ThreeThe Coil by Gayle LyndsSt. Martin's Press, April, 2004Hardcover, 448 pages ISBN: 0312301448 Ordering information: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk 
Ex-CIA agent Liz Sansborough believes she has finally put her
violent past behind her. The daughter of the infamous Cold War
assassin, The Carnivore, Liz had to pick up the pieces of
her life after she lost both her parents and her job, after her
bosses found out who her father was. Now a psychology professor at
UC Santa Barbara with a popular television show, Liz teaches
her students about the psychology of violence. But when
her cousin Sarah is kidnapped in Paris and Liz
is nearly murdered during her daily jog, she realizes that
safety is an illusion and that her past will never really
be behind her. The blackmailer's price for Sarah's release is the files
of The Carnivore, which someone is using to blackmail
prominent and highly placed people. Liz doesn't know
where her father's files are, but heads to Europe.
She teams up with Simon Childs,
an old family friend and MI-6 agent, to save Sarah. But Liz and Simon
are up against The Coil, a shadowy organization whose aims
are unknown, but whose power reaches into the very highest
levels of many world governments.
A sequel to 1996's bestselling Masquerade, The Coil brings back appealing spy Liz Sansborough, a complex woman who was lied to by her own family and whose darkest fear is that she has what it takes to become as ruthless an assassin as her father was. This fear keeps her from picking up a weapon, even as the body count rises around her and she continues to try to rationalize her way out of the violence of the clandestine world she inhabits. Liz's struggles to take the moral high road nearly get her killed, but are believable and interesting, given her unique background. Once she comes to terms with who she is and what she's fighting for (the life of her cousin and her husband), she steps back into her old life with ease. Personally chosen by legend Robert Ludlum to co-author three books with him, Gayle Lynds certainly knows her way around the espionage world. The Coil's labyrinthine plot moves at a blistering pace, and both the action scenes and the tradecraft are absolutely fascinating. Gayle Lynds has taken the classic Cold War spy novel and, with her own unique style, has updated it for a modern audience. The result is a tautly-written, intelligent and exhilarating thriller. --Claire E. White A Death in Vienna by Daniel SilvaPutnam, February, 2004Hardcover, 403 pages ISBN: 0399151435 Ordering information: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk 
Art restorer and sometime Mossad agent Gabriel
Allon is happily working in Venice to restore one of Bellini's
most beautiful altarpieces when he gets the call from
master spy Ari Shamron. Gabriel's old friend, Eli Lavon,
the chief investigator of the Austrian Wartime Claims and
Inquiries office is near death after a bombing attack. Gabriel
has not been back to Vienna since the horrific death of his
wife and daughter, but he agrees to investigate the assassination
attempt. His investigation puts him on the trail of Sturmbannführer
Erich Radek, who goes by the name Ludwig Vogel. Radek is
a Nazi war criminal now living as a prosperous businessman in Austria. When
Gabriel finally discovers his dead mother's account of what
happened to her in a concentration camp during World War II,
the case takes on a personal element that changes everything
he thought he knew about his mother and his childhood.
A Death in Vienna is the third book in the series which deals with the "unfinished business of the Holocauast," after The English Assassin and The Confessor, which dealt with the complicity of Swiss bankers in the theft of Jewish art and the Vatican's complicity in the Holocaust. The book has parallel tracks: one track delves into the past of Gabriel's mother and Radek, whose job was to erase all evidence of the concentration camps before the Allies arrived at the end of World War II. The present storyline explores the current rise of the extreme right wing party in Austria, which some attribute to the fact that Austria never prosecuted war criminals, but integrated them back into society. There is suspense and action, but there is also a very serious examination of issues that some would rather leave buried (those who claim the Holocaust never happened, for example). Gabriel Allon is a fascinating character with many demons to battle, both real and metaphorical and his struggles and exploits make for compelling reading. --Claire E. White Mystery/Thriller Reviews Page One | Page Two | Page Three Click Here to Return to the Book Reviews Index ** To visit the archives of mystery books reviewed in The IWJ, please click here. |