Eagles of Fire

Timothy Rizzi's latest novel is sure to satisfy his rapidly growing legion of fans with Eagles of Fire, in which Duke James, hero of Strike of the Cobra and The Phalanx Dragon, retakes the stage on a mission to Langau island in the Sea of Japan to forge a tie with an aging North Korean general who secretly plans to reunite his country. But back in Washington the national security adviser is holding covert meetings likely to put James' mission - and his life - in jeopardy. When the North Korean regime learns of the general's plot, matters come quickly to a head, stranding James on the wrong side of the DMZ as the skies erupt in high-tech combat.

Yankee flyboys prove their mettle anew in Rizzi's turbo-charged latest (after Phalanx), which sees returning hero General Duke James pitting his experience and courage against a global gallery of villains out to destabilize Asia. A plea from North Korean general Han Sinchon for American support of his planned coup to topple his nation's repressive communist regime brings Duke to Langau Island in the Sea of Japan for secret negotiations. When Sinchon's main rival in North Korea orders an attack on Duke's security forces, Sinchon, Duke and other stalwart Yanks get caught up in an extended duel on the ground and in the air to make it back to freedom. Rizzi fleshes out this narrative skeleton with muscular subplots concerning a conspiracy between North Korea and Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and the specter of chemical warfare and treachery on the part of an American intimate of the Oval Office. A distasteful plot wrinkle involving the blackmailing of this official as a homosexual mars the narrative's glistening surface, but the abundant, well-detailed action?this is as much adventure novel as techno-thriller?and Rizzi's knowledgeable, sympathetic portrayal of how military professionals must do their best in an uncertain and underappreciated role win the day
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

USAF Major General Richard ``Duke'' James, the high-flying hero of The Phalanx Dragon (1994) and other of Rizzi's technothrillers, does earthbound battle against savage North Koreans and a vicious home-front foe in this latest test of his considerable mettle. When Han Sinchon, the aging head of North Korea's Special Forces, gets word to the US (through Communist China) that he's prepared to launch a coup that could lead to the reuniting of his partitioned country, the White House details Duke to meet with him on Langau, a barren island in the Sea of Japan. Hedging its bets, however, Beijing informs Pyongyang about the American officer's mission, and Allan Manning, the US President's coke-snorting chief of staff (a closet homosexual who's being blackmailed by his estranged wife), is bent on sabotaging it to keep James from earning the National Security Advisor's post he covets for himself. Manning betrays Duke (and his country) to arms merchant Carl Hawkens whose Pakistani associate, Ghaith Bandar, is the go-between on deals that could upgrade the nuclear capabilities of Iran as well as North Korea and permit renegade Vietnamese to export biological weapons. When Duke reaches the rocky shores of Langau, then, the enemy is waiting for him. While the resourceful emissary strives to keep himself and his elderly contact alive, Washington mounts a massive rescue effort that soon pits an AWACS-directed squadron of F-15E Eagles against the Pyongyang military regime's Russian-made interceptors in a genuinely gripping series of aerial engagements. Duke lives to fight another day, albeit at no small cost in blood and high-tech equipment. Furious state-of-the-art action on land, at sea, and (especially) in the air, plus credibly malefic skullduggery behind the lines, will speed most readers past the holes in a plot charitably characterized as serviceable. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Rizzi's third novel, continuing hero Duke James returns to secretly negotiate the reunification of Korea with an aging general from the North. Murphy's law being what it is, the U.S. government is working on its own under-the-table deal with the North Koreans, a deal that involves disclosing the old soldier's plot and putting his government on his--and Duke's--trail. This leads to a great deal of fast action when James and the general have to escape across the Sea of Japan--so much of it that the war the meeting was intended to prevent very nearly explodes. Rizzi may indulge in too many long-winded paeans to hardware and too many viewpoint shifts, and he is not an economical writer. But his pacing is excellent, his research has been thorough, and he is steadily developing James as a character. So this is an above-average piece of storytelling that should hold the audience he won with Strike of the Cobra (1993) and The Phalanx Dragon (1994). Roland Green