Mackinnon's Machine

An old friend convinces former SAS trooper A. C. MacKinnon to train commandos for a secret mission in Libya, but an attempt on his life when the training is over convinces him that his employers have not revealed the true situation

A retired British sergeant major is duped into training an assassination squad in this unlikely, refreshingly unpretentious thriller. Employed as a rancher, A. C. MacKinnon is lured away from New Zealand by a Yank, Kenneth Glover, who tells him the target of the guerilla raid will be Moammar Qaddafy. But it is actually the presidents of Egypt and Israel and the leader of the PLO--and then the assassins themselves--whom powerful interests want killed. After MacKinnon turns Glover's soldiers into a "machine," the outfit's shady arms buyer, Kherman Shahabad, tries to murder him. MacKinnon escapes and, after a librarian helps him ascertain the real targets, resolves to head off the very men he trained. Wolf ( The Harbinger Effect ) does not wring much tension out of his intriguing premise. This miscarriage has two chief culprits: Wolf's hands-off approach to the motives for the assassination plots--attributing a scheme to "geopolitical evil" is unsatisfying--and, worse, his failure to build sympathy for MacKinnon.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When ex-commando A.C. "Mac" MacKinnon is recruited to train a strike force for a top-secret guerrilla mission in the Middle East he is drawn into a world of deceit and betrayal. As he races to unravel the lies and stop the lethal "machine" he helped set in motion, he receives aid from an unexpected source, university librarian Anne Rowen. Ultimately, she helps Mac discover the key to the puzzle when she analyzes a database search. This fast-paced political thriller by the author of The Harbinger Effect (LJ 5/1/89) seems all too chillingly possible today. The positive professional image of Anne should appeal to librarians, but the book is good reading in itself and should be popular among readers of action/intrigue fiction. For popular fiction collections.
- Barbara E. Kemp, Columbia Univ. Libs .
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.