Cut Out: A Dave Riley Novel

Mayer's Green Beret hero, Chief Warrant Officer Dave Riley (SYNBAT), returns to take on the mob and corrupt government officials in a well-paced but didactic tale about the compromising of the Federal Witness Protection Program. When Philip Cobb, former mob money launderer and current government informer, is murdered just as he is about the enter the Program, his wife, after calling an emergency Program number only to be nearly gunned down herself, turns for help to her brother, who contacts his old girlfriend, Donna Giannini, now a Chicago cop. Giannini (who appeared in SYNBAT) in turn asks her old pal Riley to keep Lisa alive while she finds out what went wrong. The rest of the narrative pits the warrior skills and state-of-the-art special-ops technology of Riley and his men against two groups of professional killers and the heinous federal officials behind one of them. While Riley's high-tech gadgets are interesting, neither he, the rest of the characters nor the story line rises much above pulp level. Moreover, too often Mayer uses his characters to voice political opinions (of Vietnam, one says, ``I spent three years fighting a war that no one even talks about anymore. A war that some assholes in Washington started and then pissed away.'') Still, with its maximum quotient of action and violence, this entry should appeal to fans of the series. (Jan.)