Entertaining and Intriguing

This author writes a very suspenseful story and I was happy when I received an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

The story opens with a mysterious woman, Salomme, dealing with a man who ran South Africa's nuclear program. He stole some of the nuclear weapons but her mission with him is unclear.

John Wells is a well liked CIA operative who shows that he is human in that he admits to putting on weight and that he isn't as fast as he used to be. He thinks of asking for an assignment with the CIA training center where there would be less travel and danger.

Wells asks his girlfriend Anne to marry him but she feels that she wants a family and for him to be there to help raise the children. With him traveling all around the world on his missions he'd be an absentee father. She tells him that if he wants her to marry him, he'd have to resign from his job and gives him 30 days to decide.

Meanwhile, a CIA case worker, Glen Mason, a high riser in the agency, gets fired for his gambling problem and from a run in with another agent. He's contacted by Salome who offers him a job. She tells him that the pay is good and her company works with industrial espionage and assassinations.

The CIA gets a tip that there is a hit on for one of their station chiefs and Wells is assigned to find out who set it up and to stop them.

I enjoyed the story and the descriptions of Wells's travel to exotic places like Istanbul, Hong Kong and Guatemala. There was good development in Wells's character but we don't learn a lot about the backgrounds or motivations of the other characters except for Mason.

There was a good conclusion and some unanswered questions that leave room for a sequel.