The Nylon Hand of God - Softcover

Hartov, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786754001 ISBN 13: 9780786754007

Publisher: West 26th Street Press, 2013

Synopsis

Israeli Military Intelligence agents Eytan Eckstein and Benni Baum are about to conclude a delicate prisoner swap between Israel and her nemesis, Iran. But when a suicide bombing at the Israeli embassy in New York throws the plan into chaos, they discover the involvement of Martina Klump, a vicious German terrorist who has an old score to settle with Baum. If Eckstein and Baum can't stop her, Klump will not only thwart the prisoner swap, but ignite an all-out war between Israel and Iran.

Steven Hartov was born in the United States and educated at Boston University. After serving in the U.S. Military Sealift Command, he emigrated to Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces parachute corps and Military Intelligence special operations. He is the author of the espionage trilogy, 'The Heat of Ramadan', 'The Nylon Hand of God' and 'The Devil's Shepherd', and co-author of the New York Times best seller 'In the Company of Heroes' and 'The Night Stalkers'. For six years, Hartov helmed 'Special Operations Report' as Editor-in-Chief. He currently serves as a Task Force commander in the New York Guard and is writing a new novel.

A superior thriller, dark and exciting. . . . The finest sort of espionage thriller.
- Publishers Weekly

Suspenseful action and twisty plotting. . . . a fine beat-the-devil tale.
-Kirkus Reviews

The gripping take, full of twists and turns, rockets from New York to Washington, D.C., to Casablanca and thence to the Algerian Sahara. It's climax is a hair-raiser.
-Lake Oswego Review

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Benni Baum, headstrong chief of the Israel Defense Force's Special Operations arm, continues to do battle against Israel's many enemies--in a lengthy but engrossing follow-up to Hartov's The Heat of Ramadan (1992). Although deeply involved in a hush-hush prisoner swap with Hizbollah (a band of Tehran-sponsored terrorists), Benni is sent on a flying visit to New York City to help investigate the bombing of a consular office. While in Manhattan, the overweight and 50-ish intelligence officer successfully reaches out to his estranged daughter Ruth (a grad student in psychology). Meantime, the crafty head of Iran's secret police has engaged Martina Ursula Klump (whose band of hired Palestinian guns does odd strong-arm jobs for Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world) to sabotage the covert exchange of POWs as cover for the theocracy's efforts to secure nuclear hardware from one of the erstwhile Soviet Union's breakaway republics. Benni and the lissome but lethal Martina have a past, and he's soon on her trail. Still, she manages to purloin a deadly new torpedo from the US Navy and to kidnap Ruth, spiriting both to a hideout in the desert wilds of Algeria. The distraught Benni quickly recruits a motley crew of Jewish irregulars (from as far away as South America) to mount a rescue mission to an ad hoc base in Casablanca. The German-born agent and his men then parachute into an assembly area near Martina's camp, rout her mercenaries, and liberate Ruth. But the ever-resourceful Martina escapes the ambuscade in a helicopter, and Benni must pursue her to the Moroccan coast for a final confrontation if he's to prevent a launching that could scuttle the long-planned trade of a Muslim cleric for an Israeli commando. A fine beat-the-devil tale notable for three-dimensional characters with failings as well as strengths, plus suspenseful action and twisty plotting. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Like his debut, The Heat of Ramadan, Hartov's second novel is a superior thriller, dark and exciting, that pits an Israeli military intelligence officer against ruthless and wily terrorists. The narrative opens with a suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in New York. Because the attack may have been intended to disrupt Operation Moonlight, an imminent top-secret prisoner exchange between Israel and the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hizbollah, the operation's engineer, Lt. Colonel Benjamin "Benni" Baum, flies to the States to investigate. There, the aging Baum takes time out to reconcile with his estranged daughter-who becomes a prime target for the colonel's old enemy, German terrorist Martina Klump, whom Baum suspects of the bombing. But neither Baum nor Klump suspect that they both are being manipulated by agents of Iran, who are using the prisoner exchange as a cover for a far more dangerous game. Hartov excels not only at action scenes-a shoot-out in a nursing home; the theft of a missile-but also at character touches and turns that deepen and complicate the plot. The most resonant complications concern Baum's past. Once revealed, they throw a shadow over the entire narrative, even its thrilling climax, lifting the novel from the realm of first-rate action-adventure into that of the finest sort of espionage thriller-one that touches on the painful truths behind the spymaster's stocks-in-trade of deceit and betrayal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: West 26th Street Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0786754001
• ISBN 13: 9780786754007
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 492