The Disciples

In a spy thriller set in 1989, Rebecca Townsend, a recruiter for the National Security Agency, disappears, seemingly with the help of a mysterious group called the Disciples

Old-fashioned romance becomes the savior of democracy in this flaky tale of high-tech espionage and the fall of Eastern bloc communism circa 1989. When sexy National Security Agency operative Rebecca Townsend disappears with her new recruit, the agency discovers her extended family's involvement in the secret information trade. Veteran analyst T. C. Steele must return from mandatory retirement to repair the security breach and make sense of the international storm gathering around Rebecca. With the help of his wife Carolyn, who is a corporate tycoon and expert pilot, and a small band of agency outsiders--ultimately including Rebecca's fiance--Steele sets out to find the AWOL agent and foil the powerful, international syndicate to which she apparently has defected. First novelist Andrew delivers his tale in Steele's own voice, a world-worn, first-person narration complete with frequent, self-conscious asides that hopelessly disrupt its flow, undercutting all suspense. The numbered epigrams sprinkled throughout quickly become tiresome, as do the unconvincing plot and lack of character development. Aside from a few good twists and a clean prose style, there is little here to recommend.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An engrossing thriller--and first novel--that displays a firm grasp of conspiracy theory and a light touch in making its wickedly outrageous premise at least plausible. The tale is set in 1989--when cold war exigencies still preoccupied intelligence operatives throughout the world--and is narrated by T.C. Steele, a sardonically detached analyst in the upper echelons of the National Security Agency and a Yale alum who knows his way around the establishment. At the heart of the matter is Rebecca Townsend, a gorgeous NSA recruiter who, unbeknownst to her employer, is part of a Rothschild-like clan (the ``Disciples'') that, in the wake of WW II, fanned out from Germany to the four corners of the earth. While making their way in many lands, the 12 branches of the family covertly collected the deepest military/industrial secrets of the US, Soviet Union, and a host of other nations. Four decades on, the self-anointed apostles of a genuinely new world order are preparing to release the amassed information in order to stalemate not only the superpowers but also such traditional foes as Israel and the Arab Bloc. The plot thickens when Rebecca, who's lulled her government masters into a false sense of security, falls in love with seemingly innocent young architect Tommy Wood. Co-opted by the NSA (whose eavesdropping yields bits and pieces of the unfolding story), Wood does constant battle for his ladylove's kin; he's also at her side for a slam-bang climax when she bests the hired guns of a duplicitous villain in a mid-ocean shootout to transmit data that explains, among other things, why Moscow stood by when the Berlin Wall fell. Steele offers an appropriately donnish wrap-up--with a satisfying twist that ties all loose ends into a very neat package. An impressive debut--and an elegantly executed conceit. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.