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The Espionage Game
Many authors have asked me what sells a book.
I don't have a definitive answer, but in the case of The Espionage
Game it was the first page. Paul Reilly grabbed my attention in
the first page and every time I thought I was losing interest and
ready to put it down, he hit me with a new plot or development. It was
uncanny the way he changed subplots just at the right time to keep my
interest. It is a classic "page turner", leaving you hanging and
wanting to read more. I started reading the manuscript late one
afternoon, and by midnight I had finished it. That is saying a lot for a
120,000-word novel.
The novel comprises of four major subplots.
First, there is the Espionage Game itself. Two ex-Cold War
spymaster adversaries, Lazarus Keesley of the CIA, and
Lieutenant-General Grigori Pavlovich Sechenov once of the KGB and now
of the SVR, are still at it, but in a more subtle way. Grigori is out
to get the CLEO computer, and Lazarus is determined to prevent him.
This turns into a Le Carré style spy-verses-spy confrontation with
double and triple crosses galore that is not resolve until literally
the last line of the book. (And don't cheat and read it first!)
The second subplot is the CLEO computer, and
her relationship with her mother and father. This is an exploration of
what a computer that becomes alive might do or think. While this theme
was previously explored in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress as well as Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 - A Space Odyssey,
Paul takes a new slant, that of the computer's relationship to those
it holds dear. Cleo, as the computer is called, is a teenage daughter
in search of herself and understanding of her world. This leads to a
number of amusing scenes, and the formation of a relationship between
her mother, Madeline, the woman who created her, and Jerry, the
hotshot pilot ordered to teach Cleo how to become a Top Gun.
The third subplot is more chilling. What was
Saddam Hussein really up to? There are many unanswered questions to
this day regarding his activities in the late 1980's. One centers
around Gerald Bull's super cannons. Do any still exist and if so what
can they be used for?
Finally, there is the sheer joy of the
technology. A good deal of the action takes place at Groom Lake, or
Area 51, and so the skies are soon filled with satellites, secret
airplanes and space airplanes. Paul has worked for a number of years
in Silicon Valley and knows the technologies well and because of that
skillfully extrapolates what is possible and indeed likely.
Read the first chapter, and see for yourself.
While no novel is for everyone, I think this one is for many of you.
Tom Kelly, Publisher, Poitin Press.
© Copyright 2003, 2006 Poitin Inc. All rights reserved.
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