The Traitor

May 15, 2006
In bestseller Coonts's assured new international thriller, Tommy Carmellini, the sardonic, laid-back CIA agent who became a star in 2004's Liars & Thieves
, gets a shot at the big time in his second featured outing when he's asked to drop his routine work and help find out why the director of French intelligence is making large, secret investments in the Bank of Palestine. Tommy wonders if he's the right man for the job; his own espionage experience in France is limited to being "assistant passport officer at the embassy." When his controller tells him that the new head of European Ops asked for Tommy by name, it turns out to be the unretired Jake Grafton (the longtime star of his own Coonts series), described by Carmellini as "the toughest son of a bitch wearing shoe leather." With support from Grafton; an enigmatic, seductive CIA agent, Sarah Houston; and a nifty little electronic weapon that Coonts says is really being tested, Tommy zeroes in on the high-level traitor who could do him—and the world—a lot of damage.