Patriots

Royce's (The Third Arm) nifty thriller hurtles along on cinematic quick-cutting. En route to London with the president, first lady and Soviet ambassador to the U.S. aboard, Air Force One explodes near the west coast of Ireland. The CIA presses British Intelligence on the possibility that the IRA is responsible: the president had favored laws that would dry up American funding for Noraid. Dubliner Laurie Galvin, in deep cover for MI5, must ""betray'' his Sinn Fein friends (and his girlfriend) in following a twisted trail. An American secret service agent commits suicide, the recovered ``black box'' from Air Force One is destroyed by IRA thugs, an Irish-American banker is kidnapped, and then things really get complicated. Royce keeps his characters moving smartly; among them, a widow of a secret service ace, American money-raisers for the IRA, Irish ``hard men'' and a very nasty pair of husband-and-wife assassins. The question, Who are the real patriots here? will keep readers turning pages until the surprising conclusion to this satisfyingly complex narrative. (April)