Secrets of State

March 2, 2015
Recently retired State Department officer Sam Trainor, the hero of Palmer’s exciting second thriller (after 2014’s The American Mission), has bounced around the subcontinent of South Asia during his 25-year career until retiring and taking a job with Argus Systems, a contractor supplying intelligence and analysis of South Asia to the CIA. While reading top-secret intel on his computer, Sam stumbles on an NSA report of a phone call involving Vanalika Chandra, the political counselor at the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C., with whom he’s having an affair. The substance of the call concerns a clandestine project whose purpose is to drive India and Pakistan into a nuclear war. As Sam follows this lead, the bodies begin to fall. After a group of terrorists steal a Pakistani nuclear warhead, Sam finds himself in a race to find and defuse the bomb before it destroys an entire city. Readers will be pleased that the ending suggests Sam will be back. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.