The Trojan Sea: A Novel - Hardcover

Herman, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380977001 ISBN 13: 9780380977000

Publisher: William Morrow, 2001

Synopsis

There is a new order to the world. The first female president of the United States sits in the White House. Monster corporations wield the real global power. And all the old rules have changed.

From Richard Herman, whom Clive Cussler calls "one of the best adventure writers around" and the Denver Post places "on a par with Tom Clancy," comes a spellbinding new novel of intrigue, politics, deception, murder, and the bloody manipulation of world events for the sake of pure profit.

Beautiful and brilliant, Lee Justine (L.J.) Ellis is, at thirty-eight, the youngest CEO ever of a major oil corporation. Ruthless, charismatic, greedy, and philanthropic, she is a strange dichotomy of positive and negative, a driven crusader on a god-given mission. And now she owns something worth killing for: secret knowledge of vast, untapped reserves of oil right in America's backyard ... beneath the territorial waters of a sworn enemy ... Cuba. It is a prize she must capture at any cost.

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Stuart is the most average of men. A military functionary toiling in bureaucratic tedium, he could never hope to live up to the legendary reputation of his father -- one of the great air force fighter pilots -- so he is resigned to serving his country in his own quiet way. But in his daily war of figures and on-screen data, Stuart notices an unusual pattern of oil tanker movement and he dutifully reports it to his superiors. Suddenly Mike Stuart's ordinary life starts spinning dangerously out of control.

A series of seemingly random "accidents" and narrow escapes -- all explainable and unremarkable, except for the number of them -- puts him on the alert. But when his ex-wife and her lover are killed in Stuart's car, he realizes that his growing paranoia is frighteningly justified. There are powerful forces closing in on one inconspicuous man, trapping him in the wide flung net of a devastating conspiracy that could brutally change the political face of a hemisphere, bring a government down in flames and chaos ... and take the life of America's's president.

Now Mike Stuart is being called upon to defend his nation in ways he never imagined. And his sole chance for success -- and survivals to become something he has never been: a warrior.

About this title

Review

How far would a Texas tycoon go to corner the market on the biggest undiscovered oil field in the world? Is there anything L.J. Ellis, the CEO of RayTex Oil, wouldn't do to get a jump start on the competition? Hardly anything, as it turns out, especially when the treasure's practically in her backyard. All it will take for the beautiful, sexy, ruthless petroleum queen to turn her company's fortunes around is a little revolution, just big enough to unseat Fidel Castro and turn Cuba's untapped reserves into liquid gold. That's the setup for this Clancy-like techno-thriller. But what might have been a tidy little mystery of international intrigue and corporate chicanery almost gets lost in all the other scenarios author Richard Herman lays out, especially the antics of a bunch of over-the-hill aviators who finally get a chance to relive their glory days and climb back into the cockpits of their fighter planes to save the day for Old Glory. One of them happens to be the father of Mike Stuart, a military bureaucrat charged with assessing the nation's petroleum reserves who notices an anomaly in the movement of oil tankers. Although Mike is ostensibly Herman's hero, he's too involved in a custody dispute with his ex-wife, a new love affair, and counting the days until he puts in his retirement papers to notice that there's a pattern behind all the seemingly random attacks on his life, and that they all tie in to RayTex. The author is at the top of his form when it comes to aeronautics and military strategy. Although he presents the reader with some interesting characters, many of whom will be familiar to fans of Herman's previous books (Warbirds, Against All Enemies, Edge of Honor), the real stars of this book are the airplanes. --Jane Adams

About the Author

A former weapons system operator, Richard Herman was a member of the United States Air Force for twenty-one years, until he retired in 1983 with the rank of major. He is the author of ten previous novels, including The Warbirds, Power Curve, Against All Enemies, Edge of Honor, and The Trojan Sea, all published by Avon Books. Herman currently lives and works in Gold River, a suburb of Sacramento, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0380977001
• ISBN 13: 9780380977000
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416