The Lie

Deception is the name of the deadly game in the pseudonymous Weaver's suspenseful new novel (after Impulse). The story explodes from the starting gate as young feature writer Kate Dennison murders the man, along with his wife, whom she believes shot dead, acting on CIA orders, her politically revolutionary parents, the Falangas, 18 years before. Kate tracked down her victims through a tip from German Klaus Logefeld, a Nazi tracker and former Falanga disciple who has a dual identity as well-known university professor Alfred Mainz. As Mainz, Logefeld is organizing in Germany a high-level international conference at which he hopes to resolve the various bloody ethnic conflicts in Africa. In the first of many amazing plot twists, Kate becomes involved with Paulie Walters, the son of the couple she shot, an artist and covert CIA agent whose expertise and contacts in espionage prove valuable when he and Kate uncover a conspiracy to kidnap a major diplomat at the conference. The ante escalates considerably when the U.S. president makes a surprise appearance at the conference and is taken hostage by Logefeld, who intends to use the chief executive as a bargaining chip in his gamble for peace. Weaver's use of duplicity to generate tension is inventive yet controlled, but the idea that Paulie remains in love with the woman he learns killed his parents is hard to swallow. That major glitch aside, this is a professionally done, middle-brow thriller that will edify few but entertain many. Simultaneous Time Warner audio. (Mar.)