Counterstrike - Hardcover

Flannery, Sean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688087779 ISBN 13: 9780688087777

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1990

Synopsis

Sociopath Donald Moran, hired to kill Mikhail Gorbachev, refuses to change his plans when his contact calls off the hit, and now the Russians and Americans must join forces to stop his bloodlust

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This thriller's basic premise has a veneer of plausibility about it. Perestroika and glasnost , so heralded in the West, have not simply backfired in the Soviet Union but have inspired a high-level plot to assassinate their author, Gorbachev--at a Geneva summit meeting. The conspirators choose super-hitman Moran for the job, only to discover, after a last-minute decision to call off the plot, that the cold-eyed Moran doesn't relinquish a project of this nature once he has clamped his jaws onto it, and is ready to kill anybody, male or female (he particularly enjoys killing women), who gets in his way. The rest is nonstop action both on land and in the air as the CIA, FBI, KGB and Soviet military intelligence pool wits and resources to apprehend the deadly sociopath. Flannery, whose novels include Moscow Crossing and The Zebra Network , doesn't bother with literary grace notes, but he seems to have some knowledge of the infrastructure of U.S. and Soviet intelligence services, and he certainly knows how to keep a high-speed international suspense caper rattling along.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The attempted killing of Gorbachev by an anti-reform cabal is just the appetizer in this 12-course orgy of gruesome deaths. A deranged assassin, honed to operational perfection by his grisly past, rivals the Terminator in his persistent and horrifying compulsion to taste blood. Led from behind by an engaging but low-level Moscow Militia investigator, an international crew with varying loyalties scrambles to head off the automaton. The author of 11 previous novels, including The Zebra Network ( LJ 3/1/89), Flannery writes with compelling force and freely salts his work with keenly precise details and invigorating language. One particular vignette will haunt librarians: the madman breaks into a public library's computer file to learn the address of his victim. Homely touches like this one enhance the suspense, which builds to a bone-chilling crescendo.
- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0688087779
• ISBN 13: 9780688087777
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 383