Smoke Screen

While trying to stop a Cuban doctor from setting a deadly virus free in the United States, a jewel thief and an intense excop from New York find their different worlds blending together as they work on one mutual goal. Reprint.

People write unfinished symphonies, so why shouldn't Vincent Patrick write an unfinished thriller? The author of such previous pleasures as The Pope of Greenwich Village and Family Business (remember Sean Connery and Dustin Hoffman as father and son in the film version?) leaves enough loose ends hanging in his latest book to cover the walls of what will certainly be a sequel. But if you can forget about closure, what's here is definitely first rate.

It begins when Fidel Castro sends a personal message to the current president (never named, but described as having a shrewd wife who herds him like a Border collie), threatening to turn loose a nasty new airborne virus unless the United States gives him some respect. A slick CIA director comes up with a scheme to snatch the Cuban doctor delivering the virus, making it look like a hostage-taking during a botched hotel robbery. He recruits a couple of ex-Agency types, including one who is secretly (he thinks) having it off with the director's daughter. Also in on the scheme is a shrewd ex-cop, who signs on an ace thief for the robbery part but doesn't tell him about the Cuban virus or the CIA.

Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong promptly does, and the Russian and Italian mafias get involved, as well as a Chinese gang. Even if at the end nobody's fate is really resolved, you'll certainly have a good time getting there. --Dick Adler