Crisis - Hardcover

Grace, Alexander M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0891414118 ISBN 13: 9780891414117

Publisher: Presidio Pr, 1991

Synopsis

When Fidel Castro takes 20,000 American and Soviet hostages, the American and Russian military join forces to implement an extraordinary rescue

About this title

Reviews

This first in a projected series of novels by the pseudonymous author, based on his experience in the foreign service in Latin America, is a polemic on world affairs thinly disguised as fiction. Fidel Castro holds hostage both the Soviet and U.S. military and diplomatic forces present in Cuba. In return for their safe release, he demands that the U.S. and other "imperialist" nations pay off the debts of the Third World; he wants Russia to realize that her power over his country is limited, at best. The high-ups in Washington (President Bush, secretary of Defense Cheney and secretary of State Baker) are in shock. China, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Libya, Angola, and Ethiopia form the People's Revolutionary Block and support Castro. Now, William Featherstone, deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in Havana finds himself allied with Andrei Osman, his Russian counterpart. Together, the two concoct a plan to free themselves and their countrymen. Meanwhile, Bush and Gorbachev make plans of their own--plans that must never be linked to them. Wooden prose and shallow characterization, combined with an immersion in technical military information that sometimes blurs the sequence of events, rob this putative thriller of suspense and immediacy.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Alexander Grace is a pseudonymous foreign service veteran whose experiences in Latin America will animate a series of political thrillers. The first of these imagines the scenario as Castro grapples for power while his Soviet props slide away. Still wily after decades of rule, he welcomes Chinese missiles in Cuba and unilaterally demands that the wealthy nations pay off the foreign debt of Third World ones. To enforce the deal, he takes 20,000 hostages--all Soviets and Americans. Operating within a single week, Grace crams in enough plot to furnish a half dozen 007 tales. His is a vivid, entertaining tropical storm of a saga where military hardware predominates over sex and gore, though there is enough of the last. The one-time superpowers of the Cold War must forge an effective alliance to outmaneuver the Cubans. Credibly yet artfully, Grace pulls it all off so well that genre fans will put in early reserves hoping that the next adventure will match this debut.
- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Presidio Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0891414118
• ISBN 13: 9780891414117
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268