Crisis

This first in a projected series of novels by the pseudonymous author, based on his experience in the foreign service in Latin America, is a polemic on world affairs thinly disguised as fiction. Fidel Castro holds hostage both the Soviet and U.S. military and diplomatic forces present in Cuba. In return for their safe release, he demands that the U.S. and other ``imperialist'' nations pay off the debts of the Third World; he wants Russia to realize that her power over his country is limited, at best. The high-ups in Washington (President Bush, secretary of Defense Cheney and secretary of State Baker) are in shock. China, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Libya, Angola, and Ethiopia form the People's Revolutionary Block and support Castro. Now, William Featherstone, deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in Havana finds himself allied with Andrei Osman, his Russian counterpart. Together, the two concoct a plan to free themselves and their countrymen. Meanwhile, Bush and Gorbachev make plans of their own--plans that must never be linked to them. Wooden prose and shallow characterization, combined with an immersion in technical military information that sometimes blurs the sequence of events, rob this putative thriller of suspense and immediacy. (Apr.)