SOMEONE TO KILL

The repercussions of long-suppressed high-level government Cold War chicanery drive this virtually seamless debut action thriller. When Judith Lyles, a fearless young investigative journalist embroiled in divorce and child-custody proceedings, is assassinated by a radio-detonated car bomb, her four-year-old daughter is also a casualty of the cold-blooded plot. Lyles's husband, John Pavlak, a Vietnam hero and the athletic director at a nearby college in North Carolina, is on the FBI suspect list, which includes an outlaw biker gang and other targets of Lyles's journalistic probes. When Pavlak phones Judith's close friend Brigitte in Berlin to give her the sad news, Brigitte's sister Karin answers and tells him that Brigitte was the victim of a fatal hit-and-run. Curious about the unusual rash of recent calls from his wife to Brigitte, Pavlak eludes FBI surveillance and flies to Berlin, looking for answers and revenge. Pavlak's father—a former WWII German POW who became a forklift manufacturer—holds secrets of a Cold War fiasco that could shake the foundation of the already tainted, bureaucratic FBI. Aided by Karin, Pavlak is pursued by the CIA as well as by other nameless forces obviously intent on stopping him at all costs. The trail leads across Europe to the Greek isles, where Pavlak is inexplicably rescued by anonymous mercenaries. With more twists than an English maze, the trail leads back to North Carolina, where Pavlak and Karin find answers in an astonishing and satisfying denouement. Agent, Mildred Marmur. (Jan.)