Go Green

Go Green

Seems that everybody's green today. Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to a sensible environmental agenda. Few Americans have a smaller carbon footprint that I do. But, I have more faith in Mother Nature than Al Gore and Henry Waxman.

Here's an idea for Earth Day: Turn off the big-screen TV. Read a book. You and the environment will benefit.

If you like spy thrillers, here's one I've just finished:

The Venetian Judgment, by David Stone. Putnam, $25.95 (432p) ISBN 978-0-399-15573-4

Stone, the pen name for a former military intelligence officer, continues his best-selling Micah Dalton series (following 2007's The Echelon Vendetta and 2008's The Orpheus Deception) with a sprawling spy thriller that spans three continents.

For the uninitiated, Dalton is a CIA cleaner—an agent who cleans up the messes left behind by fellow agents. His last assignment, however, ended with his lover, Cora Vasari, seriously wounded and Dalton deeply depressed and having long conversations with the ghost of his friend and colleague Porter Nauman. Nauman shows up at odd times, offers his old pal some sage counsel—it's from the other side, how can it not be sage?—and disappears. Dalton seems happy enough to see him.

Cora won't—or can't, Dalton's not sure—return his calls and neither will Deacon Cather, his boss at the Agency. So, he's stranded out in the cold. Left to his own devises, Dalton methodically hunts down and kills the Serbian Mafiosi who tried to assassinate Cora. That helps some but our hero's still in the dumps.

But with his boss under investigation as a Russian mole, Dalton snaps out of his funk and partners with the lovely and eager Mandy Pownall, an Agency colleague, to uncover the truth and exonerate Cather.

There is indeed a long-time mole within the Agency, and the Russians are desperate to protect his identity. It seems that they fear that a National Security Agency (NSA) project to decrypt Cold War intercepts from the 1970's will expose their man. So, they've set out to sidetrack the project. Since the Russians don't do subtle, this includes the torture killing of an adviser to the NSA project and the kidnapping and brutal murder of the son of the project's Senior Coordinator.

With all this going on and the Russians planning more mayhem, Dalton and Pownall blaze a bloody trail from London to Santorini, Istanbul, and Ukraine to expose the real traitor before the Russians destroy the evidence.

Dalton is actually a more complicated character than you'd expect from a cold-blooded killer, and Stone is adept at laying out intriguing scenarios. Add in enough action to keep an adrenaline junkie sated and you've got another winning spy thriller.

Quotable

"[E]veryone who goes to Bryn Mawr is expected to do something very clever afterward."

"Dreadfully earnest, the young. Utter bores."

"[W]ith men the journey is always better than the arrival."

"I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and I am here to totally f--- up your world."

[B]eating up suspects in Turkey was considered a man's job."