Amazon.com Review
When Saudi zillionaire Osama bin Laden speaks, Allen Trumble, CIA chief of station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, listens. When bin Laden breaks the news that he's the proud owner of a Russian-made, suitcase-sized nuclear device and wonders if there might not be someone else higher up that he might speak to, the call goes out to Kirk McGarvey, deputy director of operations. A call also goes out to some very bad men who, upon the Trumble family's return to the States, slaughter the lot of them in, of all places, a Disney World parking lot.
The administration, never bin Laden boosters, thinks even less of him after the Disney World hit, but the man does have a bomb, so off McGarvey goes to Afghanistan for a face-to-face and a look-see. Once McGarvey's in situ--and after bin Laden surgically removes a homing device from his body--the president becomes convinced that McGarvey's been killed and orders a retaliatory strike. It misses bin Laden but hits and kills his beloved 19 year-old-daughter, Sarah.
This time, as they say, it's personal, and bin Laden knows just what to do with his bomb. Detonate the little bugger below the Golden Gate Bridge just as President Haynes's Down's syndrome-afflicted daughter is passing above. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
And so goes Joshua's Hammer, David Hagberg's umpteenth thriller and the eighth entry (after 1999's White House) in his popular Kirk McGarvey adventure series. The premise is less than original, but fans of Clancyesque techno-thrillers won't necessarily be disappointed. The book moves well despite Hagberg's off-the-rack prose and characterizations, and, if the reader can navigate the babble-strewn home stretch, delivers a none-too-surprising yet satisfying finish. --Michael Hudson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Continuing the popular thriller series featuring Kirk McGarvey, CIA deputy director of operations, Hagberg (White House) revisits the threat of international nuclear terrorism. Allen Trumble, CIA chief of station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has a brief, disturbing audience with the oil-rich Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden, in which bin Laden says he has acquired a portable nuclear bomb from the Russian mafia and wants to speak to someone more important in the CIA than Trumble, if he's going to negotiate a truce. Shortly afterward, Trimble takes his wife and two teenage children back to the States for a vacation. Trimble thinks they're safe in America, but the whole family is brutally gunned down by three Arab terrorists in the parking lot of Disney World in Orlando. Then McGarvey is sent to meet with bin Laden in his stronghold in the mountains of Afghanistan. After the terrorist directs his surgeon to remove a homing microchip surgically implanted in McGarvey's side, the U.S. presidentAmistakenly thinking that McGarvey has been murderedAorders a missile strike on the hideout, killing bin Laden's 19-year-old daughter. Continuing the volley of vengeance, the terrorist has his agents ship the nuclear device (called Joshua's Hammer) to San Francisco, set to explode just as the president's daughter, afflicted with Down's syndrome, is running in the Special Olympics across the Golden Gate Bridge. He also sends an assassin to kill McGarvey's daughter, a CIA agent in the Washington area. The first three-quarters of this promising action plot moves with good pace and intensity. The denouement bogs down in exposition, technobabble and banal dialogue, however, leaving even diehard readers struggling to stay awake for what should have been a heart-stopping finale. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
