Red Mercury

The centennial Olympics in Atlanta: America is on display; thousands of domestic and foreign bigwigs are drinking Coke on CNN. What better time for a delusional genius to assert himself with a new, terribly deadly and virtually untraceable nuclear weapon. It might be a rather obvious scenario, but then, so are plenty of other thrillers. What California-based investigative journalist Ben Sherwood, in his debut as Max Barclay, does so well is to flesh out these bones with plenty of convincing dialogue (in both techno-speak and English), psychological twists, plot complications and enough red herrings to keep the narrative going without overworking the main premise. Best of all is the wealth of precise well-researched detail on Atlanta, military hardware, terrorism, Olympic history, criminal psychology and nuclear technology. Barclay could have done without quite so many characters: there's a dulling sameness to the early chapters in which character after character is introduced, and the reader may be reduced to scribbling notes until it becomes clear which characters ignite and which are just spare kindling. Partly because of the sheer size of the cast and partly because Barclay's focus is so squarely on action, the protagonists--Kyle Preston (squad leader, FBI Olympic Counter Terrorism Task Force) and Mack McFall (DOE nuclear weapons designer)--aren't fully developed. And when they predictably declare their love, the reader is still left wondering exactly why. It's the kind of thing that could be worked out in a movie version. $50,000 ad/promo; film rights to Avnet-Kerner for a possible CBS mini-series; author tour. (July)