Holy War

Drawing on experience in the foreign service, the pseudonymous Grace (Hegemon) fills his highly suspenseful fifth novel with conspiracy, violence and revolution in the Caribbean. Led by the defrocked, murderous Padre Lazaro, trained and equipped by Iran, a group of Dominican revolutionaries calling themselves the ""Santistas,"" or Holy Warriors, launches a brilliant, brutal campaign of terror and intimidation intended to arouse the masses and destroy the ruling class of the Dominican Republic. Always one step behind Lazaro's men, the American embassy in Santo Domingo flounders impotently (an incongruously competent new ambassador is kidnapped before he can unpack). Only local CIA spymaster Claude Lafeur can save the day. Black, overweight and nondescript, the cunning Lafeur knows more than any other American about the revolutionaries but is considered an alarmist until the violence mounts, the government collapses--and Lafeur discovers a mole within the embassy. Grace's handling of Caribbean politics, embassy rivalries and the frightening mechanics of modern revolution are timely and scary. And the conclusion will leave readers breathless. (Jan.)