Devil's Juggler

While a tough New York cop investigates a young woman's drug overdose, an Irish judge is blackmailed into helping the IRA, and the British Secret Intelligence Service attempts to plant an informer inside Colombia's most ruthless drug cartel. A first novel. 50,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

His first time out, British TV writer Smith has produced an exhilarating thriller in which astute characterization, a breakneck pace and an assured narrative technique result in a riveting read. Various seemingly unrelated incidents unfold in brisk kaleidoscopic succession. NYPD detective Eddie Lucco finds a "Jane Doe" dead of a crack overdose in Grand Central Terminal. Irish judge Eugene Pearson goes to Paris to make arrangements for the Provisional IRA to become the European dealers for Colombian cocaine. David Jardine, head of the SIS South American bureau, initiates an elaborate plan to infiltrate a Colombian drug grupo . Meanwhile, grupo chief Pablo Envigado is negotiating with the Colombian government to repeal the U.S. extradition law. The pieces fit together as the parties fight for control; treachery abounds and a great deal of blood is shed. The violence is not gratuitous, since it serves the plot and seems endemic to the milieu, and the lethal climax in a Bogota graveyard is a shock even in comparison to the previous carnage. Smith depicts personalities vividly--IRA partisans, for example, are "addicted to their lifestyle of murder and psycho-romanticism." In the end almost everyone fares badly, even the good guys. Brisk sales should greet this outstanding effort. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First novel about an attempt by British Intelligence to bring down Colombian druglord Pablo Envigado by placing an agent among the upper-level ranks of the Medell¡n cartel--an attempt that's tragically undermined by unwitting cross-plotting among Envigado's enemies. When romantic, guilt-ridden superspook David Jardine, whose platonic marriage is punctuated by intense, irregular adulteries, is ordered to choose a new agent to infiltrate Envigado's upstart drug ring, he prepares a list of candidates, then whittles it down to two: Scottish-Argentinean barrister Malcolm Strong and Special Forces Capt. Harry Ford--and finally, after chapters and chapters of training and indecision, decides to send Harry, at just about the same time he starts sleeping with Harry's wife Elizabeth. Meantime, in New York, Homicide Lt. Eddie Lucco finds his attempt to identify a teenage girl killed by bad drugs stymied by an unusually high mortality rate among possible informants who could explain her connection to Medell¡n hanger-on Ricardo Santos. And in Dublin, rising judge Eugene Pearson, all but promised the Attorney General's slot after the next election, is blackmailed by Envigado strongman Luis Restrepo into laying an ongoing cocaine trail into Europe in return for a regular commission that Pearson's fellow-IRA higher-ups are desperate to get their hands on. It's obvious that Pearson's wayward daughter Siobhan is Lucco's Jane Doe, but Smith takes his sweet time stringing the three plots together, feverishly introducing supporting characters and spinning out subplots as Lucco warily agrees to become the DEA's inside man, and Pearson sets himself against his chums in the IRA, and Jardine finds himself falling hard for Elizabeth, and Harry, finally nestled securely in Envigado's bosom, realizes he liked taking $2 million for saving his boss's life by killing a former colleague. British TV writer Smith's debut is immensely promising in individual scenes and episodes--especially in Lucco's gripping, believably heroic story--but overslung, overinsistent, and finally anticlimactic in its so-what holocaust. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An unidentified teenage girl is found dead in Grand Central Station, the Irish Republican Army needs money to continue its fight, and the British Secret Intelligence Service plans to infiltrate a Colombian drug cartel. Smith takes these seemingly unrelated ideas, moves the reader effortlessly among New York, Dublin, and London, and finally to Bogota, where the three story lines converge. Using his own background in the British Special Forces, Smith hits on a story that rings true, with details like the hunger strikes in Long Kesh prison and the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Readers who enjoy thrillers will welcome this new author. The book should appeal particularly to those who enjoyed Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/92.
- Karen Stewart, Colorado Legislative Council Lib., Denver
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.