The Domino Conspiracy

A common crisis unites U.S. and Soviet intelligence in glasnost -style cooperation as the Cold War rages around them in this sweeping conspiracy thriller set in the era of Khruschev and Kennedy. A powerful faction within the Soviet military initiates a subtle chain of events designed to goad Albania's secet police into assassinating Khruschev. The consequent disappearance of agents from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. spurs the legitimate intelligence forces of both countries into action--and brings back characters from Heywood's The Berkut. As Khruschev reassembles the Soviet Special Operations Group, the CIA calls Beau Valentine out of retirement in Texas. Valentine and his new partner, Sylvia Charles, following a trail of corpses throughout Europe as they pursue schizophrenic renegade spy Albert Frash, eventually fall in with the Soviet team. Caught up in Heywood's seamless plotting and taut pacing, the reader sets aside questions of history and forges on, afraid to fall behind in the chase. Post-Gorbachev hindsight occasionally distracts, but the novel's historic context--the Bay of Pigs invasion; the Khruschev-Kennedy summit--holds together, and its characters prove engaging incarnations of the thriller genre's classic types. (Sept.)