The Enemy Within [Hardcover]

Noel Hynd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2006

It is early summer of 2009, an uneasy time in the American capital. Washington is tense over a showdown between the United States and the new ruler of Libya.

Laura Chapman is a U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House. She is quirky, solitary, and frequently unorthodox. She is sexy and fit, adept with a pistol as well as with a hundred-pound Everlast bag. But she is also a brilliant intelligence analyst. That’s why she has been assigned to the Presidential Protection Detail for the past eleven years.

The CIA assigns Laura to a case that borders on the unthinkable: an assassination plot against the new president. Shockingly, the trigger man will be a member of the United States Secret Service.

Since the CIA knows that the assassin is male, Laura is not a suspect. The odds are heavily against her locating an alleged assassin within the Service, and even more heavily against her surviving the assignment.

Beyond that, problems abound: First, because of her age and gender, members of the Service as well as agents in the CIA and FBI are waiting for her to fail. Second, Laura’s personal life is in disarray, and her secret drinking is about to get out of hand. Third, the hit is scheduled to take place on July 4, 2009, in the Oval Office. Less than two weeks from now.

As her investigation proceeds, Laura cannot shake the suspicion that there are things she has not been told, that she is being set up. . . . In her increasingly frequent moments of paranoia, she wonders: Am I going to be the new Lee Harvey Oswald?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this exhaustive and sometimes exhausting political action thriller, it's 2009, and Secret Service agent Laura Chapman is pulled off her White House detail to identify and thwart an assassin who has been paid $10 million by a foreign government to kill the president. The only clues: the assassin is male and he's a Secret Service agent himself. Laura, who has spent more than a decade on duty at the White House, is not your standard, black suit and earplug-wearing poker-faced agent: she drinks too much, smokes pot, sees apparitions and gets depressed. The son of true crime writer Alan Hynd, with more than 15 novels to his credit (A Room for the Dead, etc.), Noel Hynd knows the ins and outs of Washington's agencies both public and secret. He meticulously describes Laura's investigation step by frustrating step. There are subplots dealing with an American attack on Libya, sleazy American spies, Laura's love life and the question of whether those ghosts she keeps seeing are real or not. When the ending finally lopes onstage, it's not as spectacular as most readers would wish, but Hynd ties up all his loose ends, freeing the likable Laura for duty in subsequent volumes. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Described by the publisher as " 24 meets Alias meets The Day of the Jackal," this tightly plotted novel is not, in fact, a mere hodgepodge of familiar themes. Yes, it features a female intelligence agent assigned to ferret out a would-be presidential assassin who may be lurking in the ranks of the Secret Service. But Laura Chapman isn't a clone of Alias' Sydney Bristow; the story bears only the slightest resemblance to Day of the Jackal; and there is no 24 -like episodic structure (or single-day story, either, for that matter). Hynd, whose previous efforts have mixed horror and crime ( A Room for the Dead, 1994), is a solid, dependable writer with enough literary flair to move him up a few notches above the Ludlums and Clancys of the world. With the right kind of word of mouth--something beyond facile comparisons to TV shows--this high-octane thriller with just enough political edge should find the eager audience it deserves. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765306123
• ISBN-13: 978-0765306128
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,791,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noel Hynd is an American author who has more than four million books in print. Most of his books have been in the action-espionage-suspense genre (Conspiracy in Kiev, Midnight in Madrid, Countdown in Cairo, The Enemy Within) but others (Ghosts, The Prodigy, A Room For The Dead and Cemetery of Angels) were highly acclaimed ghost stories. He currently has a multi-book publishing contract with Zondervan/HarperCollins.
He is also a former contributor to Sports Illustrated and several other national magazines. His 1988 non-fiction book, The Giants of The Polo Grounds, was an Editor's Choice of The New York TIMES Review of Books in 1988. He has also written several produced screenplays.
Mr. Hynd was born in New York City, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylavnia, and lives in southern California with his wife Patricia.
The Kindle editions of Midnight in Madrid and Conspiracy in Kiev were simultaneously numbers 1 and 2 among all books on Amazon's Kindle Best Seller lists in December 2009.
Several dozen foreign editions of his books have been published over the years. Readers are welcomed to reach Mr. Hynd at [e-mail].

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you are tired of wasting your time reading boring and badly written books check this one out., May 10, 2006

By 

Steve "Okienla" (LA CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Enemy Within (Hardcover)

I have read a lot of books like this one while traveling and almost always I am pissed off when I finish. Dumb. badly written. Cliche filled. Boring.

Not this time. Noel Hynd has written a well-researched thriller (don't let his research turn you off - he integrates it seamlessly) that rocks down to the finish line. Nicely subversive but never preachy, it manages to have both a point of view and intelligence while staying true to the conventions of thrillers.

I would reccommend this book over just about any current best seller of its kind.
Certainly it is light years ahead of every book I picked up in various airports on several recent trips to Oklahoma. (Well I did see Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon" on one rack - buy that one as well even though it is SF).

You cannot go wrong with "The Enemy Within."

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced and fantastic!, March 13, 2006

By 

Natalie Hernandez (Near San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Enemy Within (Hardcover)

An excellent hard-hitting thriller! I had previously read Ghosts by the same author, which was great, but I actually prefer this genre. I loved the new heroine, Laura, who's a US Secret Service agent. Great story, great action scenes, terrific characters, intelligent writing. I read the whole thing in one weekend. This is how spy thrillers SHOULD be. I was sorry when it ended.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, well written and fun., March 17, 2006

By 

Kathleenh "Missy" (Thousand Oaks, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Enemy Within (Hardcover)

This was a very well-written book and very enjoyable. This particular genre can degenerate into sordidness but not this book. It had grit that wasn't gratuitous and great character development. Let's have more Laura Chapman - soon!