Muir's Gambit: The Epic Spy Game Origin Story (The Aiken Trilogy) - Hardcover

Beckner, Michael Frost

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798985597400

Publisher: Montrose Station Press LLC, 2022

Synopsis

"A real adrenaline blast... I loved it!" — ROBERT REDFORD

"There's nobody quite like Beckner. You'll swallow this book whole." — I.S. BERRY, Edgar Award winning Author of THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW

"First-class spy novels with a smart, gritty atmosphere." — CHARLES CUMMING, Internationally Best-selling Author of BOX 88 and KENNEDY 35

It's 48 hours before the events of the movie classic Spy Game and Nathan Muir is about to see his world implode...

"Pass the popcorn!" AMAZON EDITORS' PICK! — Vanessa Cronin, Sr. Editor

Who'd want to assassinate Charlie March? The original Cold War hero. Mentor, brother, confessor-in-chief to Nathan Muir, he's the spy who waltzed in from the cold and wrote a bestseller in the Florida sunshine.

But when a bomb on his yacht puts Charlie March on ice, and his dying words implicate Muir, the CIA dispatch hard-luck Agency lawyer Russell Aiken to force Muir's confession and bury forty years of dirty secrets. By legal means...or otherwise.

"Muir's Gambit is espionage at its finest—taut, brilliantly crafted, and unforgettable. Nathan Muir may be the greatest spy ever put to page." — BRUCE BORGOS, USA TODAY bestselling author of the Porter Beck Mysteries

"Moving, funny, thrilling. A wonderful book." — CHARLES BEAUMONT, former MI6 operative and bestselling author of A SPY ALONE

2023 GOLD MEDAL WINNER - BEST FIRST NOVEL - Independent Publishers IPPY Awards
2022 WINNER - SPY THRILLER OF THE YEAR - Best Thrillers Book Awards
2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST - Foreword INDIES Award

Cast aside by Muir in favor of Tom Bishop, Russell Aiken wants payback. What he doesn't know is that Muir set a different kind of game in motion long ago—and Aiken has 24 hours to learn its rules before it kills him.

Epic in scope, Muir's Gambit sweeps from the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir to Cyprus terror bombings, Congo coup d'états, Angolan proxy wars, and into the final hours of the Berlin Wall. And for two men untethered from morality, all those lies leave one final night for redemption.

"It's policy versus heart... Challenges you in ways you haven't been challenged before." BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning director TONY SCOTT

"A chess game...laid out in the real world of espionage." BRAD PITT

Buy Now and return to the world of Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop but be warned: in Spy Game "It's not how you play the game... It's how the game plays you."

About this title

About the Author

"Beckner evokes the moral ambiguities of John le Carré, the technical precision of Tom Clancy, and the violent impact of Robert Ludlum. However, Beckner puts his own spin on these genre staples, elucidating, illuminating, and bringing on-point insights... [to] what the intelligence game is really all about." The US Review of Books

"Tony Mendez and I have always been two of Michael Frost Beckner's most enthusiastic readers! He captures the essence of spies and the cat and mouse choreography of espionage." Jonna Mendez, Former CIA Chief of Disguise

"Michael Frost Beckner is the rarest of spy novelists, a beautiful and compelling writer who also has a mastery of tradecraft and a deep understanding of how espionage really works." Joe Weisberg, former CIA Officer and Emmy winning creator of The Americans

After a degree in Novel Writing from University of Southern California under PEN/Faulkner winner T.C. Boyle, Michael Frost Beckner began a Hollywood career as writing assistant to Academy Award winner Barry Levinson on "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "Rain Man". In 1989, Michael Frost Beckner's script for "Sniper" launched a military-thriller franchise now in production on its ninth sequel. Three consecutive record-breaking spec script sales and three films later, Tony Scott directed Beckner's original screenplay "Spy Game." An international blockbuster that paired Robert Redford and Brad Pitt as CIA partners and rivals, it is now a classic in the espionage genre. Branching into television with his CIA-based drama "The Agency" for CBS, Beckner's pilot predicted Osama bin Laden's terror attack and the War on Terror four months before 9/11. In that series alone, Beckner would go on to predictively dramatize three more international terror events. Having penned close to 100 original screenplays, adaptations, and teleplays in the employ of every major film studio, television network, and cable outlet, he is a Hollywood institution.

From the Back Cover

It's not how you play the GAME... It's how the game plays YOU.

"Charlie March is dead. On a day that promised perfection to the hero of the CIA, an eighteen-minute countdown was all he got to enjoy it once he turned the ignition key and sent an electric spark to his sailboat's engine..."

It's 48 hours before the events of the Robert Redford/Brad Pitt film Spy Game and for spymaster Nathan Muir his life and career are about to implode. Deputy Director Harker is exploiting March's assassination to rid the Agency of Muir—the "Cold War dinosaur" and life-long devotee of March whose brash style of espionage Harker despises.

For hard-luck CIA lawyer Russell Aiken, dispatched to force Muir's confession, it's as much an escape as an assignment. On the run from a crime of passion, he's the protégé Muir cast aside in favor of Tom Bishop. Tormented by Muir's denial of his ambitions, Aiken thirsts for payback unaware that Muir launched a different game for him long ago, and he has 24-hours to learn its rules, plays, and stakes.

From the Inside Flap

With Muir's Gambit, Michael Frost Beckner returns to the world of Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop he created in the motion picture Spy Game. A prequel to the film, Muir's Gambit opens with the assassination of retired CIA hero Charlie March.

For Nathan Muir, Charlie March was where everything started: March recruited him, trained him, forged him into a master spy. But "Nathan Muir" were Charlie March's dying words, and Langley careerists find his murder the perfect opportunity to flush both Muir and their worst Cold War secrets down the CIA memory hole.

Told by the brilliant but hapless, manic but relentless Russell Aiken, this former Muir protégé is consigned to a dead-end career in Langley's legal department. That is, until he's tasked with assassinating Muir himself.

Aiken approaches his "spy game" with both jaded sarcasm and secret yearning. On the run from a crime of passion, Aiken sprints along the edges of madness through a world full of maddening corners.

As the two spies play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game over the dark underbelly of forty years of CIA conspiracies, Muir's Gambit sweeps from the Chosin Reservoir to Cyprus terror bombings, Congo coup d'état's, Angolan proxy wars, and into the final hours of the Berlin Wall. And for two men untethered from morality, all those lies leave just one final night for redemption.

Edition details

• Publisher: Montrose Station Press LLC
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798985597400
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 404