Clive Egleton, Assassination Day

Assassination Day

Clive Egleton

St. Martin's, Aug 2004, $24.95, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0312326378

The Secret Intelligence Office (SIS) is quite incensed that deceased Captain Ross Frazer, apparently wrote an "autobiographical fictionalized" account of his memoirs as a political assassin. Questions surround this potentially embarrassing manuscript; was Frazer an SIS agent now dead and, if yes, why wasn't his manuscript turned into the Firm for classified review and what to about the not so veil characterizations?

SIS Agent Will Landon investigates the book and Frazer, who died nine years ago when a truck ran him over. Meanwhile the London based literary agent working on the manuscript George Ventris is visited and threatened by two cops, Detective Constable Leach and Sergeant Nicholson. Not long afterward, Ventris is murdered and his copy of the Frazer novel stolen. In New York someone kills part-time literary agent and bookstore owner Amalie Cazelet, who sent the manuscript to Ventris. Realizing there is more to this case than a simple autobiography; SIS Assistant Director Peter Ashton enters the inquiries.

The latest Peter Ashton espionage thriller continues the post Soviet adventures with a terrific tale that is as much a police procedural as it is a spy story. The fabulous ASSASSINATION DAY is a bit different from its tremendous predecessors as Ashton plays more of a background support role for much of the novel. The story line contains the usual flawed heroes struggling to adapt in an ever changing world and red herrings that leave readers wondering (outside of Ashton and Landon) who is the good guys and who are the villains. Clive Egleton furbishes another triumphant novel that displays why he is amongst the best at the modern day espionage thriller.

Harriet Klausner