- Thor, Brad.
Path of the Assassin.
New York: Pocket Books, 2003.
ISBN 978-0-7434-3676-2.
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This, the second in the author's Scot Harvath saga, which began
with
The Lions of Lucerne (October 2010),
starts with Agent Harvath, detached from the Secret Service and
charged with cleaning up loose ends from events in the previous book,
finding himself stalked and repeatedly preempted by a mysterious
silver-eyed assassin who eliminates those linked to the plot
he's investigating before they can be captured. Meanwhile, the
Near East is careening toward war after a group calling itself
the “Hand of God” commits atrocities upon Muslim
holy sites, leaving a signature including the Star of David and the message
“Terror for Terror”. Although the Israeli government
denies any responsibility, there is substantial sympathy for these
attacks within Israel, and before long reprisal attacks are mounted and
raise tensions to the breaking point.
Intelligence indicates that the son of Abu Nidal has re-established his
father's terrorist network and enlisted a broad coalition of Islamic
barbarians in its cause. This is confirmed when a daring attack is mounted
against a publicity stunt flight from the U.S. to Egypt which Harvath is
charged to defeat.
And now it gets a little weird. We are expected to believe that, in just
weeks or months, a public relations agent from Chicago, Meg Cassidy, whose
spontaneous bravery brought down the hijackers in Cairo, could be trained to become
a fully-qualified Special Forces operative, not only with the physical stamina
which is found only in the best of the best, but also knowledge of a wide
variety of weapons systems and technologies which veteran snake eaters spend
years acquiring in the most demanding of conditions. This is as difficult
to believe as the premise in
G.I. Jane, and
actually less so, since in that fantasy the woman in question actually
wanted to become a commando.
This is a pretty good thriller, but you get the sense that Thor is still
mastering the genre in this novel. He does realise that in the first novel he
backed his protagonist into a corner by making him a Secret Service agent
and works that out with the aid of a grateful president who appoints him to
a much more loose cannon position in “Homeland Security”, which
should make all of the dozens of lovers of liberty remaining in the United States
shudder at that forbidding phrase.
December 2010 