David MacAllister was the CIA's "golden boy," itstil his arrest. Dragged through the mind-bending torture chambers of the infamous Lubyanka, he is convicted of espionage and then set free. Now, both sides want him dead, and time is running out to prove his innocence. HC: Morrow.From Publishers WeeklyCIA operative David "Mac" McAllister is kidnapped by the Soviets, tortured and sent home; back in the U.S., suspected of working for the U.S.S.R., he must find the real double agent. According to PW , this thriller "requires a leap of faith too large for even ardent devotees of spy fiction." Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Amazon.com ReviewWhen Saudi zillionaire Osama bin Laden speaks, Allen Trumble, CIA chief of station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, listens. When bin Laden breaks the news that he's the proud owner of a Russian-made, suitcase-sized nuclear device and wonders if there might not be someone else higher up that he might speak to, the call goes out to Kirk McGarvey, deputy director of operations. A call also goes out to some very bad men who, upon the Trumble family's return to the States, slaughter the lot of them in, of all places, a Disney World parking lot.The administration, never bin Laden boosters, thinks even less of him after the Disney World hit, but the man does have a bomb, so off McGarvey goes to Afghanistan for a face-to-face and a look-see. Once McGarvey's in situ--and after bin Laden surgically removes a homing device from his body--the president becomes convinced that McGarvey's been killed and orders a retaliatory strike. It misses bin Laden but hits and kills his beloved 19 year-old-daughter, Sarah. This time, as they say, it's personal, and bin Laden knows just what to do with his bomb. Detonate the little bugger below the Golden Gate Bridge just as President Haynes's Down's syndrome-afflicted daughter is passing above. Tick, tick, tick, tick.And so goes Joshua's Hammer, David Hagberg's umpteenth thriller and the eighth entry (after 1999's White House) in his popular Kirk McGarvey adventure series. The premise is less than original, but fans of Clancyesque techno-thrillers won't necessarily be disappointed. The book moves well despite Hagberg's off-the-rack prose and characterizations, and, if the reader can navigate the babble-strewn home stretch, delivers a none-too-surprising yet satisfying finish. --Michael HudsonFrom Publishers WeeklyContinuing the popular thriller series featuring Kirk McGarvey, CIA deputy director of operations, Hagberg (White House) revisits the threat of international nuclear terrorism. Allen Trumble, CIA chief of station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has a brief, disturbing audience with the oil-rich Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden, in which bin Laden says he has acquired a portable nuclear bomb from the Russian mafia and wants to speak to someone more important in the CIA than Trumble, if he's going to negotiate a truce. Shortly afterward, Trimble takes his wife and two teenage children back to the States for a vacation. Trimble thinks they're safe in America, but the whole family is brutally gunned down by three Arab terrorists in the parking lot of Disney World in Orlando. Then McGarvey is sent to meet with bin Laden in his stronghold in the mountains of Afghanistan. After the terrorist directs his surgeon to remove a homing microchip surgically implanted in McGarvey's side, the U.S. presidentAmistakenly thinking that McGarvey has been murderedAorders a missile strike on the hideout, killing bin Laden's 19-year-old daughter. Continuing the volley of vengeance, the terrorist has his agents ship the nuclear device (called Joshua's Hammer) to San Francisco, set to explode just as the president's daughter, afflicted with Down's syndrome, is running in the Special Olympics across the Golden Gate Bridge. He also sends an assassin to kill McGarvey's daughter, a CIA agent in the Washington area. The first three-quarters of this promising action plot moves with good pace and intensity. The denouement bogs down in exposition, technobabble and banal dialogue, however, leaving even diehard readers struggling to stay awake for what should have been a heart-stopping finale. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers WeeklyHagberg (Eden's Gate) resumes his CIA thriller series featuring veteran agent Kirk McGarvey with this rousing entry. Happily reunited with his wife after a separation, 50-year-old McGarvey is ready for the slow lane after a quarter-century of service with the CIA, but his work isn't over-the president nominates him for the post of interim director, which would make him the youngest man ever to serve in that capacity. He jumps at the opportunity, but his "preternatural awareness" warns him that something's not right. His research assistant, Otto, discovers that former KGB doctor Anatoli Nikolayev has fled Moscow with an armful of old classified documents from the Network Martyrs File, which held the Cold War plans for the assassination of key U.S. government figures. The assassination plans were developed years ago by an old enemy of McGarvey's, but have somehow been reactivated now that McGarvey has been appointed to his new post. Rigged helicopters, exploding vans, faulty car brakes and killer skis place McGarvey, his family and Otto in grave danger, and an attempt on his pregnant daughter's life throws McGarvey's wife, Kathleen, into an emotional tailspin. Otto rushes off to France to get some answers from Nikolayev, while McGarvey tries to keep it together for his confirmation hearings as a callous senator dissects his long-buried, sordid past. In reliably meaty prose, Hagberg once again delivers compelling characters, animated political intrigue and a plot that speeds along at a steady clip. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistIf readers are counting correctly, this is Hagberg's thirty-first novel, including some written under the name Sean Flannery. This time, Hagberg brings back the CIA's Kirk McGarvey, who, after 25 years with the agency, has been named interim director by the president. Although the cold war is over, McGarvey finds he is the target of a 20-year-old Russian plot in which an assassin brainwashed by KGB doctors at long last receives the signal he has been waiting for. The setting is worldwide: Russia, France, the Virgin Islands, the U.S., and even a luxurious company plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. There are safe rooms, secret files, encryption programs, passwords, aliases--and, of course, good guys (us) and bad guys (them). This may sound much like Hagberg's other novels, but his readers never seem to care. George CohenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publishers WeeklyHagberg's hard-hitting 14th Kirk McGarvey thriller picks up several plot threads from The Expediter, the previous book featuring the former CIA director. When Kirk's son-in-law, CIA agent Todd Van Buren, meets his college friend and Washington Post reporter, Josh Givens, at a D.C. restaurant, Josh tells Todd he's investigating a secret shadow government called the Friday Club, whose members span the breadth of Washington's political and military elite. That same day, two assassins shoot Todd to death in his car on a highway south of Fredericksburg, Md. Hours later, they murder Josh and his wife and son in Josh's Washington townhouse. An enraged Kirk is determined to bring the killers and their masters to justice, but further deaths don't make his mission any easier. Fortunately, Kirk's a tough customer, and while he's emotionally and physically damaged, readers can rest assured that he'll be back for another go at America's enemies. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistHagberg brings back his hero Kirk McGarvey (The Expediter, 2009) and pulls a Jack Bauer on him in this fine thriller. CIA operative and son-in-law of McGarvey, Todd Van Buren meets an old journalist friend who has uncovered some scary information regarding a group of high government officials calling themselves the Friday Club. Before he can investigate, Van Buren is assassinated, as are the reporter and his family. McGarvey can't let it rest until he uncovers the responsible parties. The members of the club can't let him dig, so they doctor evidence that shows McGarvey guilty of treason. Now, with nobody to trust, McGarvey goes rogue. The conspiracy creates a terrific page-turning experience, and McGarvey's personal mission brings a powerful urgency to the proceedings. It all adds up to Hagberg's best book in years. Conspire to grab this one right away. --Jeff Ayers

From Library JournalIn the world of spy and counterspy, heroes and villains have long memories and may bring their personal battles to the political and military playing fields. Thus, Hagberg's series hero, Kirk McGarvey (last seen in High Flight, LJ 9/1/95), finds himself facing some relatives of his earlier targets when he accepts an assignment to assassinate Tarankov, a hard-line Communist in Russia. Some of the old Soviet bears (Yeltsin, Gorbachev) are still alive, but Russia is spiraling downward. Merciless, ambitious, and well equipped, Tarankov is conquering the country city by city. McGarvey works his way across Europe, but his best plans may be foiled by the well-meaning intervention of his beloved daughter and his French mistress. Assassin is a cut above the competition, mostly because of Hagberg's gift for description, the rapid-fire plot, and the complex nature of his hero. Recommended.?Elsa Pendleton, Boeing Computer Support Svcs., Ridgecrest, Cal.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistThis is Hagberg's twenty-fifth novel, counting the ones he wrote as Sean Flannery. Assassin is his sixth thriller featuring Kirk McGarvey, a former CIA agent whose specialty was assassinations during the cold war. Nearing 50, McGarvey now lives in Paris, where he stays in shape by running and swimming daily. Meanwhile, in Russia one Yevgenni Tarankov is close to coming to power; his goal is to return the nation to communism and rule as a despot. Tarankov must be assassinated by a foreigner, and McGarvey reluctantly accepts the assignment. There are some minor subplots and revelations (McGarvey learns that his parents were not spies for Russia but were set up), but the novel deals with Hagberg's usual good guy^-bad guy encounter, death being the final result. There's a little sex and gore and lots of action, the perfect formula for the perfect thriller. George Cohen

From Publishers WeeklyThrough 22 novels, Hagberg (Desert Fire) has become known as a suspense writer who delivers. This massive near-future thriller will only enhance his reputation. It is 1997, and a carefully designed plot by a cabal of Japanese business and political interests is ready to be implemented: electronic units have been inserted in the fleet of a major U.S. airline, enabling the cabal, via satellite signal, to destroy the planes in mid-flight. A confrontation between a Japanese submarine and a Russian ship then puts their parent nations on the brink of war. In the U.S., a powerful newsletter publisher who believes that his country must confront the Japanese now, rather than be destroyed economically later, learns of the cabal's plot but plans to strike first by enacting the sabotage plan and blaming it on the Japanese government. To do so, he puts together a charismatic team composed of a deadly former East German assassin and two eccentric half-brothers, one an eco-terrorist, the other a computer whiz. Pitted against all this evil is ex-CIA operative Kirk McGarvey (returning from Critical Mass), who is hired by Guerin Airlines to protect its interests?but when McGarvey discovers the truth, few will believe him. Though overlong and episodic, Hagberg's narrative maintains its pace, and, by the final pages, with planes falling from the skies and WWIII seemingly inevitable, readers will be so engrossed they won't want to blink. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalGuerin Airline Company, plagued by mysterious accidents, hires ex-CIA officer Kirk McGarvey to investigate. He discovers that a Japanese conglomerate has planted a bomb in the engines of each Guerin airliner. Edward Reid, an anti-Japanese fanatic, also learns of the devices and plots to use this knowledge to his advantage. Japan, meanwhile, must deal with a scheme by rabid nationalists to start a war with Russia. After 14 American passenger planes explode, McGarvey rushes to convince the Russian, Japanese, and American governments that this was not an act of war but a terrorist attack. Hagberg (Desert Fire, Tor Bks., 1993) resurrects the worn-out ex-CIA officer scenario but combines it effectively with the current political milieu to keep readers' interest peaked. Although a bit long, this novel should appeal to those who like military, political, and espionage fiction. For all public libraries.?Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., MetamoraCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers WeeklyThe author of Crossfire sets his fast-paced new thriller in motion with an exciting scenario: an embittered Hiroshima survivor's attempt to explode nuclear devices in San Francisco and Los Angeles on the anniversaries of the two atomic bomb attacks that ended WW II. In Paris, former CIA assassin Kirk McGarvey sees his lover's plane shot down by a Stinger missile fired by a team of East German assassins in the employ of madman Isowa Makkamura. Seeking revenge, McGarvey begins to pick up Makkamura's trail after a brutal killing in Tokyo, but the East Germans kidnap his ex-wife and daughter to throw him off the track. The bloody effort to rescue the two women obscures the main plot line for a while, but McGarvey eventually confronts Makkamura in Tokyo, then joins him on a deadly flight across the Pacific before the book's final crisis, which is resolved only in the final sentence. McGarvey may be a little too superhuman--and the villains too evil by half--to be believed, but tension never lags in this certified page-turner. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsVengeful Japanese cowboy/industrialist seeks to build A-bomb; vengeful American cowboy/agent seeks to thwart same--in this expert rouser from dependable Hagberg (Countdown, 1990; Crossfire, 1991). After losing his parents in Hiroshima and his wife and daughter in Nagasaki, Isawa Nakamura resurfaces decades later as a self-made computer kingpin with the clout to take out three inconvenient CIA men on a Swissair jetliner with a surface-to-air missile. Also aboard is Marta Fredericks, girlfriend of retired Company op Kirk McGarvey, who goes on a cold-killing rampage. Nakamura's goons kill American agents by the carload, kidnap McGarvey's estranged wife Kathleen and adoring daughter Elizabeth, and use them as bait in a killing trap--since they naturally know who's on their trail and how fearsome he is. There must be a hundred killers, armed with the latest high-tech weaponry, arrayed against McGarvey, but they haven't got a prayer. (As Elizabeth confidently'' tells a kidnaper:My father is going to tear you a new asshole, sweety.'') Nothing can stop McGarvey: certainly not the French and American spooks set on his trail (he thumbs his nose at them, then signs on under his own terms), or a CIA info blackout (a Twinkie-loving hacker lets him in the back door), or the trap set by chief henchmen Ernst Spranger and icy lesbian temptress Liese Egk (McGarvey shrugs off the Navy SEALS dispatched to the Greek islands to help him--they naturally blunder into the trap in his place--and takes out the last thug with his last bullet), or the resulting wounds, which are supposed to keep him bedridden--and the bomb assembly thereby on track--for six weeks (he's en route to Japan two days later for the equally predictable showdown). Japan-bashing at its most cartoon-heroic, written with an eye for the fast clich‚. Not really good for you, or for international relations, but there's no point in fighting Hagberg's crudely effective force. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The CIA is on edge. All signs indicate that something is coming at the United States. Perhaps another 9/11, maybe bigger. The body of CIA agent Louis Updegraf ends up on the steps of the US Embassy in Mexico. His last operation was to tap into the communications of the Chinese Embassy, but there is no record of why. He appeared to be freelancing and the Agency must scramble to get a clue as to what he was after.Kirk McGarvey, serving as a visiting professor at the University of Florida, is once again longing for the action of the field. So when his old friend Otto Rencke asks him to help figure out the connection between China and the murdered agent, it takes almost no effort to get McGarvey up and running.The only informant they can find is an enigmatic Iranian belly dancer—the dark and lovely Shahrzad Shadmand. But her story changes with the wind, and her knowledge of McGarvey's past is uncanny. Kirk McGarvey must unravel her shattered mind to get to something that might resemble the truth.

Russia is in turmoil. As liberals struggle to hold power, the hard-liners in the KGB decide tof fund themselves. They will hijack a vital US gold shipment. The first step will be to frame Kirk McGarvey for the bombing of the CIA's Paris headquarters...From Publishers WeeklyThe Paris CIA station is bombed just as the U.S. returns long-frozen bank assets to Iran--in the form of 125 tons of gold. A coincidence? Not when the evidence points to ex-CIA agent Kirk McGarvey. Not when a KGB starved for funds under Gorbachev calculates the uses it could make of the treasure. And not when top KGB killer Arkady Kurshin is ready to betray his own service in order to see McGarvey dead. Hagberg recycles the central characters from Countdown in a contemporary secret-agent thriller, with settings that range from Buenos Aires to Teheran. The novel's dizzying pace is sustained at some sacrifice of clarity and credibility: a secondary plot taking McGarvey and German/Argentinean beauty Maria Schimmer in pursuit of a hoard of Nazi gold is poorly integrated with a main story line that has the Russians changing policies in an unnecessarily random fashion. But Hagberg is a master of the action scene, and readers will cheerfully follow him from episode to episode, eager to see how he extracts his characters from a succession of apparently hopeless predicaments. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsRussians, Iranians, Americans, Nazis, Israelis, and Argentines go for each others' throats in the search for real, fake, old, and new gold in at least two hemispheres. Hagberg (Countdown, Cross Fire) also writes as Sean Flannery (Counterstrike, Crossed Swords). The mystery guest enters the American Embassy in Paris and signs in as Kirk McGarvey. He conducts a bit of fake business about a lapsed passport and then wanders off on his own to plant enough plastic explosive to demolish the building and then slips outside to push the button. The real Kirk McGarvey, an out-of- favor CIA assassin, recognizes the professional signature of Arkady Kurshin, the Russian superagent that McGarvey himself had shot and thrown overboard in the middle of the Mediterranean. Could Kurshin have survived? And is he carrying out a personal vendetta? He could and he is. McGarvey, who hadn't been doing much of anything, suddenly has his hands full searching for Kurshin--whose Paris job is just the first in a series planned for all the major European capitals--and also searching with a very tense, very sexy brunette for a missing Nazi submarine, last seen off Argentina. The U-boat's captain was the brunette's father, and there was a very valuable cargo--possibly a load of ill-gotten gold the size of a shipment from the US to Iran that McGarvey must keep from disappearing into the Soviet Disunion. Sounds terribly confusing, but it's not. After 18 journeyman thrillers, Hagberg knows what he's doing. McGarvey wears very well indeed. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.