Deception [Large Print] [Hardcover]

John Altman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

An ordinary woman is caught in extraordinary circumstances, in the crackling new thriller from a major new talent.

John Altman's first two suspense novels won remarkable praise. Now, Altman gives us his best yet.

Hannah Gray is on the run. Unwittingly involved in an insurance fraud, she's leapt upon a friend's offer of tickets to an Adriatic cruise just to clear her head and figure things out. Maybe the fraud has been discovered-or maybe the threat of exposure exists only in her mind. Couldn't it be? But on the ship, she meets Renee Epstein, and that's when her life changes. Renee's husband is a scientist, and he's on the run himself. He's taken off with equations about to be used for a purpose he had not at all intended, but while he's trying to figure out what to do with them, he's scribbled them on the flyleaf of a book.

And now his wife has given the book to some fool woman she's met on the boat.

Before he can retrieve it, the Epsteins are murdered, Hannah herself is targeted, and an extraordinary adventure begins through the Greek islands and Turkey, as Hannah Gray must use all of a hitherto-unsuspected resourcefulness to battle her way through a situation that only becomes more perilous by the minute. Filled with vivid characters, breathtaking suspense, and delicious atmosphere, Deception is indeed what thrillers ought to be and seldom are.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A smart girl who ought to know better gets trapped by greed and sex in a fraud that will ruin her life unless she can outrun it. And she does, taking advantage of a friend's ticket on a luxury European cruise to plan her next step. But then fate gets in Hannah Gray's way, in the form of a murdered scientist whose secret formula ends up in her possession. Eluding the assasains who slay their way through the Greek Islands in search of the formula, and the spies who track her through Istanbul, Hannah never quite figures out why a few lines scribbled on the flyleaf of the scientist's guidebook are so important; in a clumsy bit of plotting, they involve the Ultimate, Planet-Busting Weapon, invented by a man with a social conscience who's run away rather than turn them over to a government that might not have one. But she quickly catches on to the fact that they're valuable enough to buy her way out of the trouble she's in and set her up for life, if she can get away from the killers on the ship and the G-men who are waiting on shore to take her into custody. Altman is a solid craftsman who keeps the plot moving swiftly and the scenery vivid and appealing, but it's hard to care much about any of the good and/or bad guys and gals, or even figure out which is which. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In his first two well-received thrillers, A Gathering of Spies and A Game of Spies, Altman used familiar backgrounds from WWII fiction in imaginative ways. He does the same good service in his latest, an exciting and moving adventure set in the present but owing much to the moral quandaries explored by past masters such as Eric Ambler and John le Carre. Hannah Gray is a classic Ambler character-a woman fleeing one set of troubles and getting caught up in another. Gray discovers that her lover and business partner in a Chicago medical research firm has been pulling off massive medicare fraud without her knowledge. Instead of immediately blowing the whistle, Gray takes a last-minute offer from a friend to go on a cruise from Venice to the Greek Isles, a chance to lie low and think about her options. On board, Gray befriends an elderly couple, Renee and Steven Epstein. Unbeknownst to Gray, Steven is a scientist working for a top-secret U.S. government agency, and is having second thoughts about his major breakthrough on a new energy source with devastating weapons possibilities. The head of the agency, Keyes (who goes by only one name), sends a pair of agents-including one who suffers from a medical condition that lets him pass for a 13-year-old boy-to kill Steven and Renee and recover any records of the breakthrough. Renee innocently gives Gray a guidebook in which Steven had written down the energy formula, and soon Gray is ankle-deep in death and deception in exotic locales. Altman humanizes all this contrivance with many beautifully drawn characters, especially the distraught but resourceful Gray and the terminally overwrought Keyes, already weakened by the death of a young son some years before.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 383 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786257792
• ISBN-13: 978-0786257799
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,639,390 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! Again!, July 30, 2003

By 

C. Workers (Tyler, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deception (Hardcover)

The stories and characters are immensely alive, well-plotted, and consistently engaging;give yourself a gift of this (along with his other books!)...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, June 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Deception (Hardcover)

What I really like about his books is that his main characters are always women -- and they're never entirely evil or entirely good. In this one, Hannah makes one mistake that blows up in her face -- and it's the kind of thing that could happen to anyone. A spy thriller with great action and suspense, but characters who remind you of people you meet in the street? Altman and maybe Ken Follett when he was at the top of his game are the only two people who I think do that.
Read it in about two hours -- it's shorter than the first two for some reason.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Well-Written, August 1, 2003

By 

Elizabeth Delafield (Boalsburg, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deception (Hardcover)

Altman is a new favorite author of mine. I began with his "Gathering of Spies" and have just now finished "Deception." I think its a close call between which two is the best book. Both stories are good and compelling.

Hannah, like the character of Katerina Heinrich before her, is an ambivalent woman whose motivations and longings are not the typical heroine's. It makes her all the more human, all the more realistic, because she isn't some grand, holy protagonist, but just a young woman who's made some bad choices in her life and is now mixed up in a situation that ordinary people aren't suited for.

I liked the dichotomy between Hannah and Keyes, as each character is pressured further and further by the events that bombard them. It was interesting to watch how they each responded and how they dealt with what was before them.