Private Wars (Queen & Country Novels) [Hardcover]

Greg Rucka (Author)

Book Description

Series: Queen & Country Novels | Publication Date: October 25, 2005

Only Greg Rucka, the thriller genre’s most fearless writer, would dare create a spy so edgy, so explosive, so extreme, she should be rated X.

Tara Chace was once the most dangerous woman alive. And now that the international spy network thinks she’s as good as dead, she’s even more dangerous than ever.

Only one thing could coax Tara back into the game: a chance to vindicate herself. The torture and execution of Dina Malikov has set off a cutthroat grab for power in strategically crucial Uzbekistan. Tara’s job is to slip into the country and extract Dina’s pro-Western husband and their young son before they are murdered—by his ruthless sister.

But there are a couple of wild cards in the deck, including a missing mobile weapons system that can bring down a commercial airliner, not to mention powerful political careers. Now, as she vanishes into hostile territory with a man who may or may not be what he seems, Tara is going to find out that the war on terror is more terrifying than anyone knows. For in a battle where betrayal is a conventional weapon, loyalty is a weakness, and anyone—even a child—is a legitimate target: it’s every spy, every woman, for herself.

Combine a thriller that defies every expectation with a heroine for whom nothing is out of bounds, and the result is Private Wars, a suspense novel so explosively realistic, it should be classified.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tara Chace, the heroine of Rucka's Queen & Country comics, stars in her second novel (after A Gentleman's Game). The special ops officer in Her Majesty's secret service is back in England, recovering from a mission in which her lover, spy Tom Wallace, was killed. When Tara learns she's pregnant, she quits the service and has a baby girl, Tamsin. After a year changing nappies and mourning Tom, she's offered a mission in diplomatically crucial Uzbekistan. President Malikov is ailing, and a succession fight between his son, Ruslam, and evil daughter, Sevara, has begun. Tara is asked to perform a dangerous, solo, unsanctioned lift, spiriting Ruslam and his son out of the country; of course she can't resist. After setting up child care for Tamsin, she flies to Tashkent and the op is under way. Things quickly go to hell—novels like this wouldn't be any fun if they didn't—and Tara finds herself in mortal danger at the hands of Uzbekistan's most loathsome torturer. Tara is often likened to a female James Bond (she can drink, sleep around and kill just like a man), but she's really more interesting than the comparison would suggest. These are well-researched, intriguingly complicated, exciting spy novels in the tradition of Adam Hall and his great series hero, Quiller. (Oct. 25)
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From Booklist

Here is the sequel to A Gentleman's Game (2004), the spy thriller that was based on the author's comic book (Queen & Country) that was in turn based on a late-1970s British television series (The Sandbaggers). Tara Chase, the ambitious and hotheaded Special Operations Officer for the British Secret Intelligence Service, returns from a difficult and wholly unsanctioned operation in which her colleague and lover died. To her surprise, she is not removed from active duty. To her greater surprise, she discovers she is pregnant. Denied a leave of absence, Tara quits the SIS, only to realize that life can be deadly for a spy who tries to quit the game. Rucka injects the novel with a hard contemporary edge and a heavy dose of sensuality that may prompt comparisons to the television series Alias--also featuring a young, sexy spy--but whereas Alias is slick fantasy, the Tara Chase novels are rough-and-tumble adventures that feel very real. Expect this series to stick around for quite a while. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (October 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553802771
• ISBN-13: 978-0553802771
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The author of four novels about professional bodyguard Atticus Kodiak -- Keeper (nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America), Finder, Smoker, and Shooting at Midnight, Greg Rucka has been writing since he was eight years old, and hopefully is improving with age. A longtime comics fan, his first graphic novel series was the suspense thriller Whiteout, published by Oni Press and nominated for three Eisner Awards in 1999. Since that time he has been a contributing writer for DC Comics and an active participant in the Batman series of titles.
Born and raised in California, he earned his undergraduate degree at Vassar College and his MFA at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Rucka has two tattoos, and rides a motorcycle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rucka at the top of his game, November 2, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Private Wars (Queen & Country Novels) (Hardcover)

Authors laboring in the thriller genre have produced an embarrassment of riches lately, with worthwhile books being published on what seems to be a daily basis. PRIVATE WARS by Greg Rucka is this week's entry. Rucka has established his considerable bona fides in a number of media recently, primarily in the comic or sequential art fields. He currently is authoring acclaimed story arcs in WONDER WOMAN and THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, as well as a limited series entitled THE OMAC PROJECT. Rucka also has his own ongoing graphic novel series QUEEN AND COUNTRY, where the characters in PRIVATE WARS and 2004's A GENTLEMAN'S GAME come from. While QUEEN AND COUNTRY is a favorite around Casa de Hartlaub, it is in the thrillers where Rucka's talent truly shines.

PRIVATE WARS picks up almost immediately where A GENTLEMAN'S GAME left off. Tara Chace, Minder One of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, is still reeling from the events that took place at the close of A GENTLEMAN'S GAME. Chace abruptly quits the Service after being denied a leave of absence from her post, an occurrence that almost immediately leaves her agency in the lurch when a power struggle in Uzbekistan results in a strategic crisis involving Britain and the United States. Chace is persuaded to return to service in order to extricate the pro-Western heir to power before he is assassinated.

As anyone familiar with A GENTLEMAN'S GAME might expect, there are any number of red herrings, wild cards and duplicitous settings where friend and foe change sides and identities --- if they can be identified at all. Chace has more than her own self-preservation guiding her motives, and to complicate matters her mission constantly...changes. Rucka's ability to keep things racing along while explaining and exploring the subtleties of this complex plot is almost unbelievable. Additionally, about midway through the novel, there is an occurrence that is as suspenseful and exciting as anything I have read or watched this year. Seriously. I can't give any work a higher recommendation than that.

Rucka is at the top of his game, and PRIVATE WARS is the pinnacle of his work to date. This is a thriller not to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Espionage was ultimately a game of sacrifice.", December 17, 2005

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Private Wars (Queen & Country Novels) (Hardcover)

Greg Rucka's "Private Wars" is a no-holds barred spy novel in which political considerations take precedence over saving lives and protecting human rights. Tara Chace is a courageous, resourceful, and daring British agent whose lover dies, leaving her pregnant with his child. She quits her job, but misses the excitement and quickly becomes restless. When her former boss, Paul Crocker, asks her to conduct a difficult and dangerous mission, she reluctantly agrees.

The job will take place in Uzbekistan, a crucial ally with strategic importance to the West. The head of Uzbekistan is dying and his daughter, Sevara, is in line to take his place. She has already had her sister-in-law tortured and murdered, and may have her sights on her brother, Ruslan, and his two-year-old son, Stepan, as her next victims. Tara's assignment is to spirit Ruslan and Stepan out of the country. What follows is an exciting roller-coaster ride filled with intrigue, betrayal, adrenaline-fueled chase scenes, bloody firefights, and more than a few unpredictable twists and turns. Tara's antagonist is Ahtam Zahldov, Sevara's lover and a sadistic, ambitious, and unprincipled brute who enjoys inflicting pain on his enemies. If she falls into his hands, she faces a slow and agonizing death.

"Private Wars" is a complex and challenging book that requires a great deal of the reader. It is also a clear indictment of the many lying and unprincipled individuals who run intelligence agencies for personal gain and power rather than to foster peace and spread democratic ideals.

Rucka explores the steep price that being a spy extracts from people like Tara. She suffers from nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder, and she often must depart at a moment's notice, leaving her small child with a caregiver. Every time she begins an operation, she knows that she may never see her daughter again. Sadly, Tara has learned never to trust anyone. As Rucka points out, espionage consists of "truths revealed to protect lies, relationships twisted to steal secrets, lives surrendered in exchange for [small] gains." People die, careers are ruined, governments are destabilized, and to what end?

"Private Wars" gets more exciting as the story progresses, and the conclusion is an absolute stunner. This is a thinking person's novel, along the lines of Stella Rimington's "At Risk," which I also recommend highly.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than its predecessor, January 8, 2006

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Daniel H. Bigelow (Cathlamet, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Private Wars (Queen & Country Novels) (Hardcover)

Greg Rucka first adapted the characters from his comic book "Queen and Country" to prose in A Gentleman's Game, an accomplished and intelligent actioner distinguished by strong and realistic characterizations, even among the villains. This foray is not just better, it's a lot better; and the last one was pretty darn good.

Queen and Country distinguishes itself from other espionage novels by its close attention to how office politics among spies affects the business these spies are supposed to be accomplishing. Here, the political considerations are more complex than last time while simultaneously being explained better and seeming more realistic. Furthermore, despite grim overtones, the world is generally better off at the end of the book than at the beginning -- while brutal nearly to the point of nihilism, the plot allows for more hope than the one in the last book, at least for the characters we like most.

And, as in the last book (and in the comic book series), it is the characters that make the biggest impression. The driven, lethal Tara Chace and her immediate superior in the British Secret Service, Paul Crocker, are the best spies since 007; it is always great to see them in action. As they navigate the treacherous politics of Central Asia and the sometimes even more dangerous politics of their own espionage community, they keep the reader's sympathy and attention. I had a hard time putting this book down, and I can't wait for the next one.