Assault on the Venture

The basic premise of Shelton's first novel-terrorists assaulting a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier-isn't new; this was the high concept for the blockbuster Steven Seagal film Under Siege. But Shelton manages to toss enough bizarre permutations into his plot to strain credulity. Fundamentalist Arab terrorists have a man in place on the largest and most powerful vessel in the U.S. fleet, a fanatic ready to die in order to cause an atomic holocaust that will shock the world. The kicker is that U.S. intelligence officials are aware of the scheme, if not any particulars or the identity of the saboteur-yet they still allow the ship to proceed with a globe-spanning tour. Upon its return to U.S. waters, moreover, they allow the American president to come on board. To Shelton's credit, he includes several more likely twists in his plot, and fairly seeds the clues for a totally unexpected shock ending. But his dialogue tends toward windiness, his descriptive passages tend toward repetition and the story line suffers from a lack of focus, with a shifting cast of heroes and a gallery of Arab villains who come close to caricature. (Jan.)