Skydancer (Windsor Selections) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Geoffrey Archer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Windsor Selections | Publication Date: June 1999

Project Skydancer is the pinnacle of Joyce's career, until documents turn up on Parliament Hill and MI5's prime suspect kills himself. He has the choice to write off the project or approve tests which could give Russia the power to wipe out the West.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The defense correspondent for a British TV news program, Archer bases this thriller on his knowledge of military and intelligence operations. Setting up the novel's ongoing crises is the theft of plans for Skydancer, a warhead invented by British scientist Peter Joyce. Designed to "dance" missiles unerringly past anti-ballistic defenses ringing Moscow, the warhead has been a prize secret weapon, but now is a grave concern. The narrative switches from London to Moscow to Cape Canaveral, where Joyce flies to test Skydancer and must decide whether to prove it a dud or a fool-proof weapon, agonizing choices, since failure means an enormous financial loss and success means the warhead will be in the Soviet arsenal. The situation is tense, especially for various people in England who are suspected of stealing the plans and are mercilessly interrogated by a counterespionage agent. The end is a surprising turn-around, with Joyce at a rendezvous requested by Oleg Kvitzinsky, the U.S.S.R.'s chief military scientist. Although burdened by details and perhaps too many characters, the story provokes thought on the cost, in human terms, of nuclear one-upmanship.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

From the author of The Lucifer Network, Java Spider and The Burma Legacy, comes this tautly written, topical thriller about nuclear warheads and international intrigue. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 423 pages
• Publisher: Chivers; Lrg edition (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0754013774
• ISBN-13: 978-0754013778
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Starts slow, but then it gets better and better, September 13, 2004

By 

Rennie Petersen (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Skydancer (Mass Market Paperback)

Despite several problems I ended up really liking this book, and I expect to read more by Geoffrey Archer.

The story centers around a British scientist who is the chief designer of a new kind of cluster warhead for the submarine-launched Polaris missiles deployed by the British Navy. The Russians are out to steal this "secret" so they can design a defense against this new weapon. The story ranges from high-level political decision-making to the nitty-gritty of spy craft.

What makes the book especially good is that the plot has several unexpected twists and that the characters seem like real people with real weaknesses. There are plenty of "bad guys" and "mediocre guys", but no real heroes. There is also a lot of (presumably authentic) information about submarine warfare (shades of "The Hunt for Red October") and how spies entrap their victims. A highlight is an exciting description of a meeting between the British scientist and his Russian opposite number at the Berlin wall. (The story takes place just before the end of the cold war.)

My biggest criticism is that the kernel of the plot (the scientific "secret" and the attempted deception to hide this secret) isn't viable. However, this is a typical failing of international thrillers involving a struggle over some scientific gizmo, so you have to take the plot with a grain of salt and pretend that it works.

My second criticism is that this book starts very slowly, and the characters seem cliché-like at first. In fact, when I was a third of the way into the book I was considering dropping it! I'm glad I continued reading.

Finally, I found the moral conflict between the British scientist and his wife to be too strong to be realistic. If the wife really thought her husband, because of his job, was practically a mass murderer, wouldn't she have left him long ago?

Despite this list of negatives the book really appealed to me after I got past the slow beginning.

Rennie Petersen