Counterstrike

by Sean Flannery

Overview

Ace Assassin Donald Moran has been hired by high-level Russian officers to kill Mikhail Gorbachev and destabilize the Soviet Union. But when the job is called off at the eleventh hour, it is already too late to stop Moran—a psychopath, he has spent the last twenty hours refining his perfect plan . . . and it will take much more than canceled orders to prevent him from putting it into deadly motion.

Now the only thing standing between Gorbachev and a bullet is Russian Investigator Nikolai Ganin, who must pit his wits against a psychopathic monster if he hopes to stop the attack.

"Flannery, whose novels include Moscow Crossing and The Zebra Network, doesn't bother with literary grace notes, but he seems to have some knowledge of the infrastructure of U.S. and Soviet intelligence services, and he certainly knows how to keep a high-speed international suspense caper rattling along." - Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466846630
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/01/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	504 KB

About the Author

Sean Flannery is the pen name of author David Hagberg, a former Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than twenty novels of suspense, including the bestselling High Flight, Assassin, and Joshua’s Hammer. He makes his home in Vero Beach, Florida.

Sean Flannery is the pen name of author David Hagberg (1947-2019), a former Air Force cryptographer who traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean. He spent more than thirty years researching and studying US-Soviet relations during the Cold War.

He wrote dozens of novels of suspense, including the bestselling High Flight, Assassin, and Joshua’s Hammer.

Editorial Reviews

This thriller's basic premise has a veneer of plausibility about it. Perestroika and glasnost , so heralded in the West, have not simply backfired in the Soviet Union but have inspired a high-level plot to assassinate their author, Gorbachev--at a Geneva summit meeting. The conspirators choose super-hitman Moran for the job, only to discover, after a last-minute decision to call off the plot, that the cold-eyed Moran doesn't relinquish a project of this nature once he has clamped his jaws onto it, and is ready to kill anybody, male or female (he particularly enjoys killing women), who gets in his way. The rest is nonstop action both on land and in the air as the CIA, FBI, KGB and Soviet military intelligence pool wits and resources to apprehend the deadly sociopath. Flannery, whose novels include Moscow Crossing and The Zebra Network , doesn't bother with literary grace notes, but he seems to have some knowledge of the infrastructure of U.S. and Soviet intelligence services, and he certainly knows how to keep a high-speed international suspense caper rattling along. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The attempted killing of Gorbachev by an anti-reform cabal is just the appetizer in this 12-course orgy of gruesome deaths. A deranged assassin, honed to operational perfection by his grisly past, rivals the Terminator in his persistent and horrifying compulsion to taste blood. Led from behind by an engaging but low-level Moscow Militia investigator, an international crew with varying loyalties scrambles to head off the automaton. The author of 11 previous novels, including The Zebra Network ( LJ 3/1/89), Flannery writes with compelling force and freely salts his work with keenly precise details and invigorating language. One particular vignette will haunt librarians: the madman breaks into a public library's computer file to learn the address of his victim. Homely touches like this one enhance the suspense, which builds to a bone-chilling crescendo.-- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress

Library Journal