Prism

Carey Hawkins is an unusual assassin. Highly skilled with a sniper rifle, he is also armed with extraordinary psychic powers, which he employs to devastating effect in this spooky, if murkily plotted, techno-thriller from Bay (The Coyote Cried Twice; A Quick and Dirty Guide to War). Hawkins, who narrates, acts as a disturbingly amoral agent of The Shop, a psychic special-ops division of the CIA. Reluctantly brought out of retirement, he is assigned to infiltrate the security network of a paranoid Texas billionaire, Coleman O. Mosley. The Shop knows Mosley plans to assassinate the U.S. president, but Hawkins is unsure of the purpose of his mission. Is he to foil Mosley's plot or assist it? Once on the billionaire's payroll as a hired gun, Hawkins is tested in bloody shoot-outs in Bosnia and Somalia as Mosley prepares him for the ultimate rub-out. The climax to all this mayhem is surprising and shocking, if not quite satisfying. Bay lays down his story in cool, lean prose that's as tough as his protagonist, who's plenty tough. If, in battle, brain is superior to brawn, then the Rogue Warrior has met his match here, and then some. (July)