Assumed Identity

September 6, 1993
The creator of Rambo and author of the bestselling The Fifth Profession has not lost his touch; this is a thrill-a-minute adventure novel. During his career as an undercover Army Special Operations agent, Brendan Buchanan has taken on more than 200 assumed identities. But when his cover is blown on a drug sting in Mexico, he is forced back on the identity he knows the least--his own. Buchanan receives a desperate SOS from Juana Mendez, the operative who posed years before as his wife. Determined to save her, Buchanan travels across the U.S. and ultimately back to Mexico accompanied by fearless, sexy Washington Post reporter Holly McCoy, who knows a lot about covert operations and is planning a feature on Buchanan. During their travels, they uncover a bizarre tale of a missing opera diva, her billionaire industrialist lover and his plot to destroy ancient Mayan ruins in order to exploit the world's greatest untapped oilfield. With all the action of a James Bond adventure and just a dash of the melancholy of John le Carre, this is a terrific suspense thriller, but it will probably be even more satisfying on the silver screen where the novel's lack of emotional or intellectual resonance will be subsumed in the highly kinetic adventure. Major ad/promo; movie rights to Universal; BOMC alternate.

July 1, 1993
Remember the good, old-fashioned secret-agent novel? It's become a lot more sophisticated since the Bond-crazed 1960s, most notably in acknowledging its heroes as mere mortals complete with deep and sometimes dark psychological problems. Morrell, creator of the wildly popular and troubled John Rambo, here introduces Brendan Buchanan, an American spy who specializes in changing his identity. No, there's no plastic surgery; rather, Buchanan is a government "method" actor, actually becoming the characters he's assigned to portray. Unfortunately, failing to alter his features causes him to be recognized by someone from a previous assignment, and the chain of events that follows makes him a target not only of the bad guys but maybe the American government as well. Aided only by his wits and a pesky reporter who eventually becomes his love interest, Buchanan uses his various identities to infiltrate a truly dastardly plan by the bad guy, Professor Alistair Drummond. While battling evildoers, Buchanan also fights the ghosts of his past, a past he's tried to escape by constantly changing his identity. This is a fast-paced, entertaining thriller with an intriguing central character, a plot loaded with twists and turns, and an open-ended conclusion that suggests this is the first of a series about Buchanan and his reporter-lover, Holly McCoy. ((Reviewed July 1993))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1993, American Library Association.)