The Protector - Softcover

Morrell, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446614033 ISBN 13: 9780446614030

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2004

Synopsis

From First Blood to The Fifth Profession, New York Times bestselling author David Morrell has delivered more high-octane thrills than any writer of his time. Now he shows his readers the never-before-revealed secrets of real-life covert operators-and takes action to a whole new level. Know Him. See Him. Stop Him-Or Die. No one knows his real name. No one knows where he lives. Trained by Delta Force, calm in moments of absolute terror, Cavanaugh stops threats before they strike-silently, swiftly, and lethally. His latest assignment: protect a brilliant scientist with a secret so extraordinary he needs to disappear and adopt a new identity. For Cavanaugh, helping Daniel Prescott is just another job. Until it explodes, Prescott vanishes, and the protector finds himself in a fast, furious battle for his life.

About this title

Review

The secret weapon developed by the man Cavanaugh is assigned to protect is like Kryptonite to the former Delta Force officer turned security guard--it multiplies the effects of adrenaline, a hormone associated with fear, so it incapacitates instead of energizing him. A lot of people want Daniel Prescott's secret, but Cavanaugh, who's felt the drug's effects, wants his antidote. When Prescott disappears after causing the death of the Global Protective Services team charged with keeping him alive, Cavanaugh and his wife Jamie go after him in a high-speed chase that traps them between governmnt agents and foreign operatives each racing to find the scientist first and kill him before he can use his formula on them. Despite Prescott's double-dealing, and the bloody battle in a mountain redoubt that results in the deaths of his friends and colleagues, Cavanaugh knows the only way to banish the fear that may compromise his and Jamie's own safety is to track the elusive scientist to his last refuge. In this propulsive thriller, Morrell turns the tables so often that it's hard to separate the good guys from the bad ones, but that won't keep readers addicted to violence, treachery, and high-tech weaponry from staying with it to the last surprising chapter. --Jane Adams

About the Author

My father was killed during World War II, shortly after I was born in 1943. My mother had difficulty raising me and at the same time holding a job, so she put me in an orphanage and later in a series of boarding homes. I grew up unsure of who I was, desperately in need of a father figure. Books and movies were my escape. Eventually I decided to be a writer and sought help from two men who became metaphorical fathers to me: Stirling Silliphant, the head writer for the classic TV series "Route 66" about two young men in a Corvette who travel America in search of themselves, and Philip Klass (whose pen name is William Tenn), a novelist who taught at the Pennsylvania State University where I went to graduate school from 1966 to 1970. The result of their influence is my 1972 novel, First Blood, which introduced Rambo. The search for a father is prominent in that book, as it is in later ones, most notably The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984), a thriller about orphans and spies. During this period, I was a professor of American literature at the University of Iowa. With two professions, I worked seven days a week until exhaustion forced me to make a painful choice and resign from the university in 1986. One year later, my fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from bone cancer, and thereafter my fiction tended to depict the search for a son, particularly in Fireflies (1988) and Desperate Measures (1994). To make a new start, my wife and I moved to the mountains and mystical light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where my work changed yet again, exploring the passionate relationships between men and women, highlighting them against a background of action as in the newest, Burnt Sienna. To give his stories a realistic edge, he has been trained in wilderness survival, hostage negotiation, executive protection, antiterrorist driving, assuming identities, electronic surveillance, and weapons. A former professor of American literature at the University of Iowa, Morrell now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446614033
• ISBN 13: 9780446614030
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 496