Operation Fantasy Plan

Effectively using his background as an agent trainer for the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gilboy offers a compelling if somewhat melodramatic look inside the CIA's efforts to infiltrate Japanese businesses via a Bangkok brothel known as ""The Fantasy Store."" Peter Gaines is a former agent who gets fired from his assignment working in the brothel but nonetheless longs to return to Thailand to find the beautiful prostitute named Song, with whom he has fallen in love. Shadowed by a seductive agent as he makes his way back to Southeast Asia, Gilboy discovers an old friend from his salad days with the Company in charge of the program. This spook has changed the agenda to include mutilation of the prostitutes in an effort to entrap a Japanese scientist and blackmail him into keeping Japan from rearming. Outraged by the direction the program has taken (the Fantasy Store now uses peasant children in addition to professional, adult hookers), Gaines goes on a one-man mission to destroy the store and set free dozens of innocent Thai girls. The material concerning the organization of the brothel, the CIA's relentless pursuit of its mission and it's blatant disregard for the law is genuinely chilling, but Gilboy spends too much time on his protagonist's paranoia and jaded dissatisfaction. The confrontations between Gaines and his nemesis are generally satisfying, and Gilboy has a sure sense of moral paradox. Gilboy definitely has the talent to write a top-notch spy novel, but this debut is hindered by a series of distracting flaws. (July)