Colin MacKinnon, The Contractor

The Contractor

Colin MacKinnon

St. Martin's, Mar 2009, $24.95

ISBN 9780312355784

Rick Behringer may manage Global Reach Technologies, but he uses the communications designs firm as a front to hide his covert operations as CIA contractor. The agency uses Rick when it needs sensitive retrieval. As a "foreign materiel acquisition" expert, Rick purchases weapons from black markets and rogue nations that he delivers to the CIA.

In Pakistan, Rick learns that Ahmed "the Engineer" Sajid is offering plenty of money for nuclear material. The Engineer hopes to entice a Russian Mafiosi to steal the nuclear material and sell it to him. His plan is to create a nuclear weapon. Rick reports the market place rumors to his handlers who outsource to him the investigation.

The key to this superb spy thriller is the extrapolation of the Bush outsourcing of the Iraq War by contracting out to the private sector espionage covert activities; those who prefer ultra small government will especially appreciate the concept of a CIA with a few Contracting Officer Representatives. Rick is not a CIA civil servant, but instead a contractor hired intermittently as needed as an expert in his case retriever. Fast-paced and exciting, sub-genre fans will relish this terrific stolen nuke thriller.

Harriet Klausner