An exhilarating new tale of modern espionage and adventure featuring US Navy intelligence officer Alan Craik. In Tel Aviv, Commander Alan Craik, a US Navy veteran agrees to check out the death of a former Navy enlisted employee. He plans to be out the door and on to his real work in half an hour. But the task quickly turns dangerous, and what should have been a routine investigation becomes something very ugly. Nominal American allies in Israel withhold or alter information; nominal colleagues at home set up their own operation to satisfy the political needs of Washington; a wife betrays her husband and deceit and distrust prove to be the only common denominator. When Mike Dukas, a dogged, cynical special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service joins the investigation, it leads them all from Tel Aviv to Gaza and the Greek island of Lesvos to Jerry Piat, a renegade CIA officer. With agents of Mossad and the Palestinian Authority always close behind them, Alan Craik demands the answers to some far-reaching questions: what are the rules in modern conflict? Where is honour? And what is the cost of telling the truth?
Gordon Kent was (is, I suppose) two people, my son - Christian Cameron, author of TYRANT and WASHINGTON AND CASEAR and other books - and me. The reason for the pseudonym was the obvious one that two names on a cover were not thought as good as one. And of course the one needed to be anglo and male; my suggestion of Max Cohen got nowhere, as did several dozen others we trotted by the publisher. Eventually, we settled on Gordon Kent: Gordon was my father's name, my son's middle name; Kent, oh, well.
We wrote eight novels - the Alan Craik books - under this pseudonym, starting with NIGHT TRAP (RULES OF ENGAGEMENT in the US, probably one of the most overworked titles there is) and ending with the much darker (and more satisfying) SPOILS OF WAR and THE FALCONER'S TALE. The books were about the air side of the US Navy, mostly about intelligence, but with a lot of derring-do that real intel officers never get to play at. They were usually fun to write because we'd both been in the navy, my son a good deal longer than I; we had our differences, as any two people must, but it was a surprisingly workable relationship. Lots of long-distance telephone calls, occasional meetings to go fishing and use the time in the car to plan books. We worked from outlines made on those trips, then divided the scenes up - we quickly learned who did which sorts of scenes and which characters better - and then we wrote and exchanged files and bickered and praised and wound up with a book.
Is Gordon Kent finished? We wonder. We're both writing our own books now under our own names, but occasionally we feel a nudge to go back to that partnership. Maybe, maybe....
