The Russian Bride

This brisk, easy-to-read thriller from Kovacs (Unseen Forces) stars Maj. Kit Bennings, a rugged U.S. military intelligence agent. Currently assigned to root out moles in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Bennings finds himself the target of a complicated coercion scheme by mobster Viktor Popov, who has Bennings’s mother killed in California and threatens to do the same to his sister, whom he has already kidnapped. To free his sister, all Bennings has to do is marry a Russian woman, Yulana Petkova, and take her to the U.S. Desperate to save his sister, Bennings reluctantly agrees to the marriage. He soon learns what Popov really wants: Benning’s help in stealing an electromagnetic-pulse device that could disable the infrastructure of large swaths of the U.S. and open the door to massive cyber-theft opportunities. Readers who like their heroes focused and fearsome—and who don’t mind formulaic plotting and characterization—will want to see more of Bennings. [em]Agent: Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Associates. (Apr.) [/em]