Blood of the Albatross

While earning extra money by giving sailing lessons on Puget Sound, Jay Becker ends up fighting for his life against an international network of spies after he meets a beautiful, mysterious woman on a boat

This second thriller by the author of Never Look Back has lots of potential but never manages to catch fire. The book opens crisply with the murder of a CIA agent in Germany who has passed information about a mole in the FBI to a courier, a woman agent who must evade capture. The plot turns sluggish when it shifts to Seattle where a middle-level FBI man becomes a pawn in a ruse to gain sensitive military secrets. Innocently caught in the intrigue is Jay Becker, a rock musician and sailor, who is hired to teach a young German woman how to handle a boat. Becker falls for the woman, an electronics expert, who, he learns, is being used by the spy ring to assess the material being received. The book is best when the author crosscuts back to Europe and the CIA courier's escape with the information, but the bulk of the action is padded, slowing the narrative pace.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In Seattle, the ordinary life of Jay Becker (part-time sailor, bicyclist, and musician) is shattered by violence and international intrigue as he becomes involved with a mysterious German woman to whom he is giving sailing lessons. When Roy Kepella (an alcoholic Seattle-based CIA agent) participates in an internal sting operation by stealing top secret data, Becker is only one of the many players drawn into the vortex of Kepella's staged downward spiralleaving Kepella to wonder who is friend, who is foe. Meanwhile, the CIA "mule" with information vital to the Seattle operation is trying to evade enemy agents in Europe in an attempt to reach the U.S. Pearson skillfully spins this thriller with sense-of-place, breakneck pace, and economically drawn, believable characters. V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.