The Last Goodbye

This smartly plotted and smoothly written debut thriller by the pseudonymous Bell (of whom all we know is that he's ""a former government employee"") is a welcome throwback to the innocent days of Elleston Trevor and early Deighton. Ito Kawai, a Japanese terrorist plotting revenge for Nagaski from a sumptuous lakeside village in Slovenia, is building a bomb that he plans to detonate in San Diego and lacks only the deadly new substance, ""red mercury,"" to activate it. Convinced by the director of the CIA that he's the man to take Ito down, Marcus Malone, former CIA agent and head of a failing security agency, lets himself be falsely exposed as a flashy criminal arms dealer. He then disappears into Eastern Europe with the hope that Ito will contact him for red mercury. When Malone's new ladyfriend, a dauntless dental assistant, decides to join him in Prague, the excitement increases to a level just begging to be filmed. Bell keeps his thriller clean and fun with a dose of healthy sex--but nothing kinky--and a modicum of tasteful violence. (Dec.)