Smoke Screen: A Novel [Hardcover]

Vincent Patrick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 1998

In the wee hours of the morning, four men in latex masks enter the elegant Montclair hotel in midtown Manhattan. After detaining the night staff, Frank Belmonte, one of the best jewel thieves in the business, breaks into the safe-deposit boxes held by the rich old residents of the hotel. "Frankie Rocks" takes roughly ten million dollars worth of jewels from the boxes. The heist seems to be running smoothly until some unexpected guests arrive at the hotel and the burglars are forced to take them as last-minute hostages. But these are no ordinary hotel guests, and three of the four thieves aren't really looking for jewels. Their agenda is one of national security.

One of the hostages is a renegade Cuban doctor who has smuggled a deadly airborne virus out of the Angolan jungle. The Cuban government has threatened to unleash this epidemic on America unless the President meets Castro's demands for an immediate, complete end to the economic embargo on Cuba. To thwart this international blackmail, CIA director Linwood Cutshaw needs to capture the doctor before he releases the virus on American soil, but he must create a smoke screen, so the Cuban authorities won't know the doctor has fallen into U.S. government hands. Cutshaw has recruited Teddy Tedesco, an honest ex-NYPD cop, two ex-CIA operatives, and Frank Belmonte for this nervy scheme -- but only Frank thinks they are out for the jewels. All at once, their elaborate plans go awry and the thieves must face the unexpected. The quirky team of Teddy and Frank is forced to work together to root out the missing jewels while the enraged doctor prepares to inflict a new black plague on millions of unsuspecting Americans.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

People write unfinished symphonies, so why shouldn't Vincent Patrick write an unfinished thriller? The author of such previous pleasures as The Pope of Greenwich Village and Family Business (remember Sean Connery and Dustin Hoffman as father and son in the film version?) leaves enough loose ends hanging in his latest book to cover the walls of what will certainly be a sequel. But if you can forget about closure, what's here is definitely first rate.

It begins when Fidel Castro sends a personal message to the current president (never named, but described as having a shrewd wife who herds him like a Border collie), threatening to turn loose a nasty new airborne virus unless the United States gives him some respect. A slick CIA director comes up with a scheme to snatch the Cuban doctor delivering the virus, making it look like a hostage-taking during a botched hotel robbery. He recruits a couple of ex-Agency types, including one who is secretly (he thinks) having it off with the director's daughter. Also in on the scheme is a shrewd ex-cop, who signs on an ace thief for the robbery part but doesn't tell him about the Cuban virus or the CIA.

Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong promptly does, and the Russian and Italian mafias get involved, as well as a Chinese gang. Even if at the end nobody's fate is really resolved, you'll certainly have a good time getting there. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly

It doesn't take long before the uh-ohs start piling up in this solid thriller exploring a worldwide germ menace by the author of The Pope of Greenwich Village. Thanks to a virus discovered in Zaire in 1989, Cuba now has a biological weapon it can use to blackmail the U.S. just before the 1996 election. But the CIA has a line on the Cuban doctor, Ernesto Rivera, who's coming into the country to release the virus as a demonstration of its lethal capabilities. CIA head Lin Cutshaw asks ex-cop Teddy Tedesco to stage a hotel heist, in the course of which Rivera and his contact will be "accidentally" kidnapped. Teddy calls in an old adversary?Frank Belmonte, master thief?and feeds him a cover story, and the reader senses quite rightly that chaos is about to ensue. Patrick doesn't disappoint: when the kidnapping goes wrong, and the Cuban doctor escapes with the swag and the virus, all hell breaks loose, and it's the unlikely alliance between the ex-cop and the robber that propels the rest of the book. Patrick places these two characters in a world where nearly everyone else is out for themselves, including gangsters who want to get made, CIA agents who try clean house and federal agents who see a chance for the score of a lifetime. Patrick weaves these elements together with the casual mastery of a storyteller who plays against conventional plot twists. The result is a refreshingly taut, intelligent work of suspense. Agent, Owen Laster.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (December 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688155367
• ISBN-13: 978-0688155360
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,906,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unconventional thriller, October 3, 2000

By 

Old Fisherman "Jim" (Orange, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smoke Screen (Paperback)

The premise behind this book is very good. Capture a Cuban terrorist who arrives in the US, but make it look like something else. The "something else" becomes a hotel robbery that goes bad and the Cuban winds up being taken as a hostage. However, the hotel heist really does go bad and the Cuban escapes, along with ten million dollars in diamonds. Teddy Tedesco, ex-New York cop, must find the terrorist before he releases a deadly air-borne virus at a political convention in New York City.

As I said, the premise and the plot are quite good and convoluted. Just when you think you have the whole thing figured out Mr. Patrick throws another monkey wrench into the deal and you're off in another direction. However, I had a hard time finishing this book. Mr.Patrick is a very low-key writer and at times the writing fails to generate the excitement the plot calls for. It's not a bad book, far from it, but it didn't grip me with the same intensity of say a James Lee Burke novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Patrick's literary voice is an old friend I've missed, April 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Smoke Screen: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book is unlike Patrick other two books. I think I spotted some of what Patrick read in the years since his last book. It has influences of The Hot Zone (if Vincent is reading this: Your dedication to Richard...was that Richard Preston, the author of The Hot Zone?), some Clancy and, of course, Patricks' previous novels. Excellent!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read, but should have been edited better!, April 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Smoke Screen (Paperback)

I question Mr. Patrick's research not to mention his editors. There is nothing worse than reading along at a fast clip and hitting a speed bump, such as finding a sentence where a young Italian boy is saying goodnight to his elderly Italian neighbor by saying "Buena notte" A serious literary speed bump, especially for something as basic as 'goodnight'! AND...A Spanish-speaking man who received a childhood nickname because he was skinny would probably not call himself 'Flocko'. Flaco, maybe, but Flocko? I doubt it. And an Italian-speaking bank robber, who the plot reveals learned Spanish in prison, overhears a conversation in Spanish where someone says that the 'cosas' are in upstate New York. He recounts the conversation to his partner, saying he wasn't sure what the word 'cosas' meant. Well , if he knew some Spanish, as we were told a few chapters earlier, he would have no problem with this word. And as if that isn't ridiculous enough, cosas means the same thing in Italian as it does in Spanish. Apparently somebody was asleep on the job when this was in the edit stages. I found Smoke Screen to be entertaining, for the most part, although I do agree with one of the other customer reviews which complains about tangents in the plot, such as the Asian gang and the 'cosa nostra' and Russian mob stuff which is never really developed. It is a fun read. But not stellar.