SWEENEY'S RUN

Puzzled when he discovers the dead body of his old friend in his house on Chesapeake Bay, former Department of Defense Intelligence officer Tom Sweeney attempts to decipher the dying words his late pal has scribbled in his own blood.

An intelligence officer, out of work thanks to the New World Order, goes free-lance to find out why an old associate took the trouble to crawl into his bathroom before expiring of multiple bullet wounds. Hunter's thrillers include The Potsdam Bluff and Tailspin. There's a bit of '40s ``Why you....I oughtta'' flavor, plus a spunky aviatrix--but everything else is quite up-to-date in this brisk, cynical thriller about a plot to tidy up the world drug- market and possibly advance the cause of a German neo-fascist politician. Even a past working relationship with the current President in post-Bush America is not enough to protect Tom Sweeney from peacetime budget cuts. Laid off from his high-level job at a between-the-cracks intelligence agency, the handsome bachelor cheerfully plans a few months of goofing off--but then a call from the police informs him that a corpse has been found in his bathroom and that the dead man has left a message in blood. The policeman turns out to be a fake, but the message is a real warning of danger for both Tom and the President. Within hours, there are attempts on Sweeney's life, and it becomes necessary for him to flee his pleasant Chesapeake Bay hideaway and form an ad hoc alliance with his beautiful ex-assistant, now an aerobat, and with an unusually resourceful automobile mechanic. Sweeney's predicament has something to do with an immensely complex scheme to monopolize the cocaine industry using pilotless planes and boats and vast amounts of cash. His enemies include an especially loathsome TV personality, a pack of vicious Germans, the President's ambitious and sexy chief of staff, the very nasty Vice President, and perhaps even Sweeney's old boss. The bad guys have not calculated on the persistence of an unusually intelligent general heading the drug- enforcement effort, Sweeney's remarkable survival skills, or the maneuverability of the lady's ancient flying machine. Rattles along pleasantly enough. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When a man from his past turns up dead in the bathroom of his house in Chesapeake Bay, Md., retired secret agent Tom Sweeney finds that he is a moving target for mysterious killers. Only gradually does this complex techno-thriller set in the near future reveal Sweeney as the crucial figure in an international plot involving South American drug lords, German neo-Nazis, and a cabal of high-ranking U.S. officials whose influence reaches the presidency itself. Unfortunately, Hunter ( The Potsdam Bluff ) baffles his readers even more than his protagonist with a conspiracy too elaborate to be plausible and too undeveloped to be convincing. Until its final scenes the novel conveys no sense of why Sweeney's death is of such vital importance to the plotters. Nor is Sweeney intriguing enough to engage us in his fate for its own sake. Certainly nothing in his actual behavior merits the enthusiastic praise Hunter periodically puts in the mouths of Sweeney's foes and friends--especially that of his lover, pilot Cap O'Brien. Why is O'Brien is so smitten with Sweeney? This is indeed the most interesting mystery in a work that from first page to last equates confusion with suspense.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.