Amazon.com: Nine Days in October (9780975576182): Ron Terpening: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2007

Richard Donovan, a professor of art history from Arizona, has come to Italy on sabbatical, bringing his two girls with him--Pam, eleven years old, and Claudia, just turned sixteen. While shopping in Rome, the family falls victim to a botched heist and Claudia is taken hostage. Working with Renzo Feroni, Italy's top cop, and Sandra Patrizi, a journalist, Donovan learns that the heist is part of a much vaster conspiracy. At stake is the fate of the world's major powers and--what matters most to Donovan--his daughter's life.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } Richard Donovan, a professor of art history from Arizona, has come to Italy on sabbatical, bringing his two girls with him--Pam, eleven years old, and Claudia, just turned sixteen. While shopping in Rome, the family falls victim to a botched heist and Claudia is taken hostage. Working with Renzo Feroni, Italy's top cop, and Sandra Patrizi, a journalist, Donovan learns that the heist is part of a much vaster conspiracy. At stake is the fate of the world's major powers and--what matters most to Donovan--his daughter's life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the fall of 1988, this less than engaging thriller from Terpening (Tropic of Fear) opens dramatically. An unsuccessful jewelry robbery in Rome claims the life of one of the two teenage daughters of Richard Donovan, an American art history professor. When kidnappers seize Donovan's surviving child, Claudia, she becomes a pawn in a mega-terrorist scheme to kill Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, the U.S. president, who appears to be Ronald Reagan, and the Italian premier. Donovan must scramble to rescue his child before the bad guys can achieve their evil aims. The plot's engine-to get the terrorists' choice for the U.S. president's successor elected from a sympathy vote-is far-fetched, and the melding of historical figures with fictitious political developments encourages, rather than dispels, disbelief.
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Review

Suspense author and professor of Italian Terpening (League of Shadows; Tropic of Fear) gets his latest book off to a slam-bang start in Rome with a botched heist by terrorists. During the robbery, a visiting American professor is wounded and his daughter kidnapped, possibly for ransom. The time is 1988, and competing government security organizations are preparing to welcome both the Soviet premier and the U.S. president. Terpening's complex plot revolves around the wounded professor's attempts to find his child while he is unknowingly trapped in an assassination scheme involving rogue CIA agents, venal U.S. executives, Soviet oligarchs, and corrupt Italian security officials. The reader roots for a weary Italian security officer to do his job better than the villains do theirs. The author's research is evidently extensive, the writing competent, the suspense gripping, and the characterization of beastly adversaries and noble protagonists effective. The sense of place is bolstered with such an abundance of native vocabulary and street and building names that Italophiles will feel right at home. Recommended for all public libraries. --Library Journal, July 15, 2007

This is not Terpening's first fictional foray into the murk of international crime, but it's his most successful thus far. In previous works Tropic of Fear and League of Shadows, [he] proved himself an able creator of setting and conflict, and a conscientious researcher. In this latest novel, he demonstrates an increased ability with the craft itself with detailed sensory mood, a handle on his multiple characters and well-paced and motivated action. . . . Terpening narrates in a clean style that's not self-conscious, using a convincing store of detail. He's painted his primary male characters with nuance and sympathy . . . . [A] well-wrought high-action tale. --Christine Wald-Hopkins, "High-Action Tale," Tucson Weekly (August 23, 2007), 41.

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Ron Terpening Page

I like writing thrillers (and teen novels) because they're so much fun to read. And I love reading. Reading's my favorite pastime whether it's a crime novel by Elmore Leonard or Dennis Lehane or a thriller by Nelson DeMille or Harlan Coben.

But I try a bit of everything--from teen lit like NICK & NORA'S INFINITE PLAYLIST to popular fiction like Neil Gaiman's ANANSI BOYS, from so-called serious literary fiction by, say, someone like Wallace Stegner (THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN) or Edward Abbey (THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG and THE FOOL'S PROGRESS) to mainstream fiction by authors such as Pat Conroy, John Irving, and Larry McMurtry.

I recently finished a "Lifetime Reading List," which I've posted on my personal website (http://www.ronterpening.com). Arranged chronologically, the list contains over 3,000 novels, all well worth your time.

As for the standard bio: I was born in Bellingham, Washington in 1946 and was raised in small towns in Washington and Oregon. I graduated from Gresham Union High School (near Portland) and earned my bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon in Romance Languages and my Master's and Ph.D. in Italian at the University of California in Berkeley. So that's why so many of my thrillers have Italian (and international) settings.

I taught for four years at Loyola University of Chicago (1978-1982) before moving to the University of Arizona, where I was a professor of Italian until I took early retirement in 2008.

I and my wife, Vicki, live in Tucson, Arizona, along with four golden retrievers, our third generation of those beautiful dogs.