cover image Hammerhead

Hammerhead

Julian Jay Savarin. St. Martin's Press, $16.95 (278pp) ISBN 978-0-312-01770-5

Helicopter ace David Pross (Gunship, Lynx, etc.) teams up once again with beautiful super-spy Sian Logan, and their relationship is as coy as ever. (Pross is ""happily married'' although his real love seems to be the eponymous helicopter.) He first meets and pilots the state-of-the-art Hammerhead in North Wales, when the supposedly secret night-trials are interrupted by a couple of enemy teams firing SAMs at the copter. Pross, of course, beats the bad guys handily and returns to his family and helicopter-charter business. A couple of months later, though, he must hie back to the Himalayas to rescue Logan, using the Hammerhead to destroy a small flotilla of enemy airships. Devotees of helicopter lore and aerial battles will enjoy Pross's latest adventure, although the technological details are sometimes boringly abstruse. Savarin's fans will also be comforted by the usual personalities and their usual quirks, like Logan's fondness for her pistol (`` `Important things first,' she murmured, and picked up the gun . . . .'') and Savarin's consistent use of ``alright.'' (April)