Live Wire
Jay McInerny

The Director of the CIA has discovered that the president has committed many felonious acts to fill his financial coffers; if POTUS' actions become known, he will be impeached and probably convicted of crimes. Knowing the country cannot absorb such a traumatic crisis at this time, the CIA head comes up with a clever way of overthrowing the President and replacing him with the General, his superior in the army.

Tucker convinces the President that North Korean possesses a nuclear bomb that the rogue nation plans to sell on the weapons market. To prevent that from happening, he convinces POTUS to back rebels who want a democratic unified Korea. For Tucker's hidden agenda to succeed, someone must be caught in North Korea with papers describing the President's intent to overthrow the regime, an illegal act. Courier Simon Leonidovich is the chosen fall guy, but he escapes the trap. Tucker's minions have orders to assassinate him on sight. Simon knows what has occurred and hopes to reach DC where he figures he faces further attempts on his life to shut him up.

LIVE WIRE is a frightening thriller because the events seem plausible. The characters with the exceptions of Simon and the CIA Director are stereotypes symbolizing ideas and concepts rather than people; to a degree so are Simon and the CIA chief with the courier trying to do the ethically correct thing and stay alive while the spymaster wants the crook out of the White House. There is plenty of action and political intrigue in Jay McInerny's cat and mouse thriller, which depending on who survives will determine the direction of the United States.

Pocket, Apr 2006, $7.99, 354 pp.
ISBN: 1416503471
Harriet Klausner