Hunter's Run

Major Bob Yardley is selected to steal an American national treasure, sealed in an Iranian palace, so the U.S. might swap it for hostages

Expertise fills--and sometimes clogs--every page of this adventure by counter-terrorist expert Rivers ( The Killing House ). Pulled from his leadership position as a Special Forces officer, Major Bob Yardley is virtually kidnapped by the U.S. government and given the task of masterminding an audacious jailbreak. In England, he assembles a team of covert-operations agents to spring a British prisoner who may have obtained classified American documents on the Soviet government. Rivers's step-by-step account of the plan's execution is a skillful anatomy of a caper, although whole passages are stuffed with needless tech-talk; a flight to Marseilles, for example, becomes an excuse for a ground-to-cockpit transcript. About halfway through the novel, Yardley discovers that he's been a pawn in a much larger game--an attempt to steal Iran's Peacock Throne. Despite the relentlessly gung-ho dialogue and some structural problems, including a hero who disappears for much of the narrative, the novel offers the undemanding entertainment value of a B-movie double bill.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.