Rift Zone (Hardcover)

by Raelynn Hillhouse (Author) "The face of Stalin smirked at her from the bottom of a porcelain soup tureen as she bargained with an aging East German couple in..." (more)
Key Phrases: nuclear suitcase, time fuse, lead strip, West Berlin, East German, East Berlin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Hillhouse's gripping debut, a cold war thriller, has so many unexpected pleasures that its flaws barely register. It's 1989, and American professor Faith Whitney is staying in Germany with the faint (and dimming) hope of learning about her missing father; to make a living, she smuggles minor items (Stalin china, Nazi crystal, etc.) from East Berlin to West. After being captured by the East German Stasi, Faith is forced to smuggle for them or face imprisonment. KGB agent Zara Bogdanov is another antagonist, but a sympathetic one: ambitious and beautiful, she's also openly gay, a strike against her advancement. Capturing Faith and getting her to spy for the KGB would be a feather in Zara's cap, but her motives are unclear, even to herself. Their extended cat-and-mouse game, fueled by a flirty mutual attraction (though Faith is straight), gives an enticing pulse to the sometimes implausible plot. An extended section in which Faith transports hazardous material feels like a climax, but the story continues for another 50-odd pages. The book may be better for its two strong women and its incisive picture of a significant era in recent history than for its thriller elements, but Hillhouse is a welcome new voice.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Hillhouse shows a firm grasp of suspense and intrigue in her auspicious debut, a satisfying international thriller. Weaned on the risky exploits of her mother, a Christian missionary running bootleg Bibles behind the iron curtain, Faith Whitney has become a notorious smuggler, prompting a cabal of hard-line Communists in East German Intelligence to press her into a key role in a plot to overthrow Gorbachev, end glasnost, and ice over the thawing cold war. Seeking KGB intervention from a sexy female agent, she finds herself in a treacherous spy dance that not even her ex-fiance, bomb-squad commando Max Summer, can blast through. Hillhouse keeps things rocketing forward with deft camerawork and a well-constructed plot, punctuated with plenty of high-octane action, including a nifty sequence involving pickled brains and an explosive episode that would be a bad choice for in-flight reading. Several gripping, border-crossing scenes are informed by the author's own background as a rum-runner and black marketeer. The characters are appealing, although one longs to see more of a subplot in which a massacre at an Azerbaijan orphanage spurs Faith's mother to action. Expect this impressive iron-curtain thriller to attract a large readership, among which will be Martin Cruz Smith fans. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765310139
• ISBN-13: 978-0765310132
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #693,830 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When 's The Sequel Out?, August 13, 2004

By	Jim@chautauqua - See all my reviews

Being a thriller novel reader, I aways compare books with Clancy's novel; how they pull you in and hold your attention. Well this book did all that and more for me. Not only did it engage me in the story immediately but it held my attention like Clancy. However noted differences dirverge here. Hillhouse provides a genuine suprise chuckle scattered throughout; sometimes at the most inauspicious moment. Whereas most thriller novels, involving obfuscatory Russian names, are difficult to resume and keep everyone straight, given the inevitable family diruptions, Hillhouse has a way of presenting that I found eased me back into the story and characters without having to regroup and glance back to keep eveyone identified. This was a totally unexpected storyline. A female heroine. Just the right amount of everything here, except.......when's the sequel out?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rapidly Moving Action, August 4, 2004

By	William J. Hays, Ph.D. (Peoria, IL) - See all my reviews

The action of Rift Zone moves rapidly from one peril to the next with interwoven schemes by the heroine, Faith, to checkmate her adversaries. The plot is well structured utilizing the author's knowledge of Germany and Russia to make several dynamic scenes seem plausible. International consequences with probable nuclear war is expected unless Faith and her two associates can thwart the plans of a group of high ranking East German and Russian conspirators. One of these associates is a highly capable lesbian lieutenant colonel in the Russian Service whose motivations are not certain until late in the book. The other associate is a past lover who is an American demolition expert. Finally, the confrontation with the conspirators results in the resolution of a mystery, who is/was Faith's father (a clue is given earlier), and leads to an exciting climax culminating in an unexpected scene at the end.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rift Zone, July 30, 2004

By	Richard Katz (Mill Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Le Carre lives in a woman's body. This author knows her territory and it shows. She brings us in to the pre glasnost world in East Berlin and immerses us in a complex thriller/mystery. An easy read that I couldn't put down once I got past the first 60 pages. The first pages aren't bad, it's just it took a while to get into the characters. A great first novel.