Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Gambit-Karna Small Bodman

Gambit
Karna Small Bodman
Forge, Feb 2008, $24.95
ISBN: 9780765319289

Computer scientist Dr. Cameron "Cammy" Talbot has little time to sit on her laurels following the CHECKMATE technology she and her team created that prevented war between India and Pakistan. Recently a terrorist has developed a missile system that has shot down commercial aircraft; Mr. President, Vice President Jayson Keller, and their top National Security advisor Austin Gage wants her and her Bandaq Technologies team to create an antimissile gizmo to place on planes so that the cock pit can be aware of a deadly incoming and destroy it.

She visits her associate Dr. Wen Hu at MIT for assistance, but soon afterward someone kills him and destroys his lab. She realizes that she is next and a few somewhat amateurish but potentially lethal assaults occur. Cammy turns to her former lover, Special Assistant to the President for Arms Control and Strategic defense Lieutenant Colonel Hunt Daniels for protection while few fly and more die who do.

More a romantic suspense (even the VEEP wants Cammy) than a thriller, readers will enjoy this race against the clock each day means more deaths and less air traffic. The story line grips the audience as the enemy technology seems plausible. Although the romantic subplot is well written it feels out of place as the excitement is with stopping the adversaries soonest.

Harriet Klausner

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