Prism: A Novel - Hardcover

Bay, Austin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060175257 ISBN 13: 9780060175252

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1996

Synopsis

On the cusp of the next millennium, in a dangerous yet eerily familiar near future, the most advanced electronic weaponry and spy systems have been augmented by a far more cultivated implement of war. The new ultimate weapon is the human mind. Using special crystals - prisms - to focus psychic energy, some of the physically "able" have learned to master extrasensory powers and probe others' minds. "Able" humans posses limited, though useful, psychic talents. The "most able," however, have learned to mentally double other humans - to totally control another's thoughts and actions. More frightening, their selectively bred offspring have even more extraordinary gifts.
The real power in this new world is not the people, Congress, or multinational corporations, but The Shop - the psychic CIA - a macabre intelligence agency operated by the "most able." The Shop is controlled by Chatterley, a powerful woman of allegedly unique psychic genius. Chatterley's sources have intercepted information that a sinister group (led by a billionaire would-be president from Texas, Coleman Oswald Mosley) is planning to assassinate the president of the United States. Mosley's organization is seeking the ideal killer. Chatterley calls in a former Shop assassin named Wes Hardin. Pulled from his self-imposed retirement, Wes agrees to pose as a mercenary gunman named Carey Hawkins and infiltrate Mosley's group. Mosley hires Wes, demanding a perfect, vicious kill. In order to ensure his new assassin's loyalty, Mosley kidnaps Wes's daughter.
Prism builds with riveting speed and authenticity through Wes's indoctrination into Mosley's paramilitary "peacekeeping" force, his preparations to assassinate Mosley's Washington targets, and the sudden emergence of his own "most able" talents.

About this title

Reviews

Carey Hawkins is an unusual assassin. Highly skilled with a sniper rifle, he is also armed with extraordinary psychic powers, which he employs to devastating effect in this spooky, if murkily plotted, techno-thriller from Bay (The Coyote Cried Twice; A Quick and Dirty Guide to War). Hawkins, who narrates, acts as a disturbingly amoral agent of The Shop, a psychic special-ops division of the CIA. Reluctantly brought out of retirement, he is assigned to infiltrate the security network of a paranoid Texas billionaire, Coleman O. Mosley. The Shop knows Mosley plans to assassinate the U.S. president, but Hawkins is unsure of the purpose of his mission. Is he to foil Mosley's plot or assist it? Once on the billionaire's payroll as a hired gun, Hawkins is tested in bloody shoot-outs in Bosnia and Somalia as Mosley prepares him for the ultimate rub-out. The climax to all this mayhem is surprising and shocking, if not quite satisfying. Bay lays down his story in cool, lean prose that's as tough as his protagonist, who's plenty tough. If, in battle, brain is superior to brawn, then the Rogue Warrior has met his match here, and then some.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

James Bond lives again in a wildly improbable, marginally absurd military thriller that forges high-tech hardware and ESP. Armchair military strategist Bay (A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, not reviewed; coauthor of From Shield to Storm, 1992, etc.) reworks the Bond formula, introducing Wesley ``Wes'' Hawkins, a psychic soldier and employee of an ultrasecret extrasensory- perception government spy bureau called ``The Shop,'' managed by a female psychic puppeteer named Chatterly. Wes is ordered to haunt a dingy bar in Toulon, posing as a mercenary, so that he can infiltrate the Texas-based high-tech empire of American billionaire industrialist Coleman Oswald Mosley, a failed presidential candidate and impassioned model railroader. Wealthy enough to own a fleet of 747's and military hardware sufficient for a dozen Third World dictatorships, Mosley wants Wes to assassinate former American President and avid golfer Grover Renwick as well as current President Randall Duncan. To make sure Wes cooperates, Mosley's paramilitary thugs abduct his daughter. What follow are several scenes of artfully executed military mayhem in Bosnia, Somalia, northern Virginia, and Montana in which Wes distinguishes himself. While Mosley and his army communicate by beepers and e- mail, Wes chats with Chatterly by focusing his mental powers on crystals. Alas, Chatterly keeps her powerful thoughts to herself, saying little about the assassination plot or the importunate temptations of Sari, a leggy femme fatale posing first as a French chambermaid, then as a topless Caribbean nymph. Wes also gets flirtatious glances from the President's ``tigress'' wife, Carolyn Duncan, who, we presume, has other things on her mind than universal health care. After some Byronic brooding on the dehumanizing aspects of being manipulated by nasty people, Wes finds the fate of the world in his hands, and also finds himself, his daughter, and the President's son in a hail both of gunfire and psychic blasts. Implausible but readable fantasy for Soldier-of-Fortune fans. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Wes, a former assassin for a covert CIA group called "The Shop," is persuaded to come out of retirement for a special assignment. Using his psychic ability to read minds and project thoughts, Wes penetrates the private army of billionaire Coleman Mosley and leads several commando missions for the rich man. Then Mosley kidnaps Wes's daughter and forces him to assassinate the president of the United States. Bay, the author of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (Morrow, 1991), worked as a consultant for the Secretary of Defense. As a result, his descriptions of weapons and strategy are precise and detailed. Yet he fails to develop his characters or setting, so that ultimately the reader doesn't care what happens to the protagonist or his friends. Bay's premise that mind control can be used as a weapon is a fascinating idea, but he fails to explore it adequately. Most collections can pass on this one.?Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060175257
• ISBN 13: 9780060175252
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240