Smoke Screen

In the wee hours of the morning, four men in latex masks enter the elegant Montclair Hotel in midtown Manhattan. After detaining the night staff, Frank Belmonte, one of the best jewel thieves in the business, breaks into the safe deposit boxes held by the rich old inhabitants of the hotel. "Frankie Rocks" takes roughly ten million dollars' worth of jewels from the boxes. The heist seems to be running smoothly until some unexpected guests arrive at the hotel and the burglars are forced to take them as last minute hostages. But these are no ordinary hotel guests, and three of the four thieves aren't really looking for jewels. Their agenda is one of national security. One of the hostages is a renegade Cuban doctor who has smuggled a deadly airborne virus out of the Angolan jungle. The Cuban government has threatened to unleash this epidemic on America unless the President meets Castro's demands for an immediate, complete end to the economic embargo on Cuba. To thwart this international blackmail, CIA director Linwood Cutshaw needs to capture the doctor before he releases the virus on American soil, but he must create a smoke screen, so the Cuban authorites won't know the doctor has fallen into U.S. government hands. Cutshaw has recruited Teddy Tedesco, an honest ex-NYPD detective, two ex-CIA operatives, and Frank Belmonte for this nervy scheme—but only Belmonte believes they are out for the jewels. All at once their elaborate plans go awry and the thieves must face the unexpected. The quirky team of Teddy and Frank is forced to work together to root out the missing jewels while the enraged Cuban doctor prepares to inflict a new black plague on millions of unsuspecting Americans. An electrifying and all too believable caper, SMOKE SCREEN twists unpredictably toward an explosive denouement.

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