Angel Eyes

This latest Lustbader ( White Ninja ) creation reads as if it is three novels in one. The narrative skips among various locations in America, Tokyo, Moscow, as well as a brief sojourn in Colombia, with each setting entailing a whole new cast of characters and web of challenges. The travails of intelligence agent Tori Nunn link these divergent scenarios. Murdering bad guys as she goes--and here the cruelest are females--Nunn recognizes the treachery behind almost everything that happens to her. As she tracks the parties responsible for exporting a highly lethal form of cocaine, Nunn learns that somebody is smuggling hafnium, a material used in nuclear reactors, to an underground nationalist organization in the Soviet Union. She leaves Japan, where the cocaine trail has brought her, to support the overthrow of the KGB and the Communist government. The twists and turns of the plot are at first confusing and then tedious; a surfeit of events distracts the reader. Nevertheless the book has all the elements of a bestseller--travel, romance, violence, conspiracy and betrayal in high places--and Lustbader's attentions to martial arts and Zen teachings again spice the mix. (Feb.) Hallie Lawrence held