High Flight

When the Japanese sabotage and crash fourteen American airplanes as a means of striking America's largest industrial export, the United States is forced to confront the demolition of its superpower economy in the light of thousands of deaths. Tour.

Through 22 novels, Hagberg (Desert Fire) has become known as a suspense writer who delivers. This massive near-future thriller will only enhance his reputation. It is 1997, and a carefully designed plot by a cabal of Japanese business and political interests is ready to be implemented: electronic units have been inserted in the fleet of a major U.S. airline, enabling the cabal, via satellite signal, to destroy the planes in mid-flight. A confrontation between a Japanese submarine and a Russian ship then puts their parent nations on the brink of war. In the U.S., a powerful newsletter publisher who believes that his country must confront the Japanese now, rather than be destroyed economically later, learns of the cabal's plot but plans to strike first by enacting the sabotage plan and blaming it on the Japanese government. To do so, he puts together a charismatic team composed of a deadly former East German assassin and two eccentric half-brothers, one an eco-terrorist, the other a computer whiz. Pitted against all this evil is ex-CIA operative Kirk McGarvey (returning from Critical Mass), who is hired by Guerin Airlines to protect its interests?but when McGarvey discovers the truth, few will believe him. Though overlong and episodic, Hagberg's narrative maintains its pace, and, by the final pages, with planes falling from the skies and WWIII seemingly inevitable, readers will be so engrossed they won't want to blink.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hagberg's dozenth assassin-studded, spook-skulking tale features nations teetering on the edge of war. At issue is control of a next-generation supersonic jetliner; its American manufacturer naturally becomes the takeover target of the Japanese. The Americans defend themselves by enlisting unemployed superspy Kirk McGarvey, who taps into his ex-enemies, the Russians, for help in ferreting out what the Japanese are up to. A lot of no good, that's what: they sabotage the American planes to depress the company's stock, and their submarine sails around sinking Russian warships and menacing American ones. Meanwhile, a Japan-bashing American newsletter publisher plans to instigate a Japanese-U.S. war, and he hires a ruthless Stasi graduate and a techno-terrorist as his hitmen. Hagberg, a maven of mach speed mayhem, intricately moves these pieces around his global chessboard, until many bodies, plane crashes, and a running sea battle later, action hero McGarvey wipes out the bad guys. Cartoonish yet popular, Hagberg's long yarns always muscle their way to the top of the techno-intrigue-warfare genre. Gilbert Taylor

Guerin Airline Company, plagued by mysterious accidents, hires ex-CIA officer Kirk McGarvey to investigate. He discovers that a Japanese conglomerate has planted a bomb in the engines of each Guerin airliner. Edward Reid, an anti-Japanese fanatic, also learns of the devices and plots to use this knowledge to his advantage. Japan, meanwhile, must deal with a scheme by rabid nationalists to start a war with Russia. After 14 American passenger planes explode, McGarvey rushes to convince the Russian, Japanese, and American governments that this was not an act of war but a terrorist attack. Hagberg (Desert Fire, Tor Bks., 1993) resurrects the worn-out ex-CIA officer scenario but combines it effectively with the current political milieu to keep readers' interest peaked. Although a bit long, this novel should appeal to those who like military, political, and espionage fiction. For all public libraries.?Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.