Rules of Betrayal

Starred review from May 31, 2010
Reich's outstanding third thriller featuring Dr. Jonathan Ransom (after Rules of Vengeance) finds the courageous surgeon, who no longer works for Doctors Without Borders, in the hinterlands of Afghanistan, where he gets caught in a Taliban raid that ends with him being choppered out of a vicious firefight. As in the two previous novels, Jonathan becomes enmeshed in a mission that's run by Division, a secret U.S. government agency. The series' ongoing and fascinating twist is that Jonathan's wife, the extremely capable and extremely deadly Emma, may or may not be a Division agent, a Russian spy, or something else entirely. Jonathan willingly enters the dark world of espionage to rescue Emma after she falls afoul of Taliban warrior Sultan Haq and an evil arms dealer known as Lord Balfour. Emma's liberation of a nuclear bomb lost by the U.S. in the mountains of Pakistan in 1980 leads to an untied thread that will have readers eagerly awaiting the next installment.

June 1, 2010

A nuclear warhead is loose, and only Dr. Jonathan Ransom can retrieve it—if he can get past that rogue wife of his.

Back in 1984, a fiery mishap aboard an American aircraft stranded a powerful nuclear device atop an isolated peak in Pakistan. Now there are telltale signs that the deadly warhead has been recovered by Punjabi-English arms merchant Ashok Balfour Armitraj, who, true to his business instincts, intends to sell it for the highest price he can get. Frank Connor, the head of that supersecret espionage division called Division, has only one chance to infiltrate Balfour's Swiss compound before he can turn over the weapon. Send in Jonathan Ransom, who's already been reluctantly entangled with Division more than once (Rules of Vengeance, 2009, etc.), to impersonate Dr. Michel Revy, the cosmetic surgeon slated to give Balfour a new look so that he can vanish with his ill-gotten millions from his pursuers' radar. Apart from being a crack surgeon, Ransom doesn't have any notable credentials for the assignment, and before he can be sent into the Alps, he'll have to be put through a series of training sessions in close-quarters combat, spycraft and counter-espionage at the hands of Israeli mentor Danni Pine. The biggest fly in the ointment, however, is the highly predictable involvement of Ransom's wife Emma, who's been forced to help Balfour pluck the warhead from its perch and is still keeping company with the arms dealer. Will the Taliban drug lords waiting to purchase the bomb succeed in annihilating a high-value American target? Can Connor identify the mole inside Division who's compromised one of his best agents before Connor is neutralized himself? And what sort of connubial reunion awaits the on-again/off-again Ransoms high in the Alps?

Good questions, all of them, but you'd never know from this mashup which of them is most important. Maybe the Ransoms—think Nick and Nora without the laughs—deserve a break the next time life as we know it is under the gun.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2010
Surgeon Jonathan Ransom and his secret-agent wife, Emma, return in this third installment of Reichs Rules series. Working in Afghanistan for Doctors without Borders, Jonathan has an accidental encounter with a terrorist, from whom he barely escapes. Back in the U.S., he is recruited by his wifes agency. Emma has disappeared while investigating the possible acquisition of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist cell, and now her only hope of rescue lies with her husband. Does Jonathan have the skills to become a spy and save the woman he loves? Of course, betrayal is the name of the game here. Reichs ability to craft tense story lines and to populate his high-concept spy thrillers with fully developed main characters quickly have made him one of the new masters in the spy game. Its a bit disappointing, though, that Jonathan gets drafted into the game this time, because its more fun if he's an outsider. That nitpick aside, this is still a fine effort from the reliable Reich. The number-one rule about his Rules novels: read them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)