The Death Trust

August 13, 2007
Australian Rollins (Rogue Element
) introduces a tough, wisecracking hero in his U.S. debut. When Gen. Abraham Scott—CO of Ramstein Air Base in Germany and son-in-law of the U.S. vice president—dies in a suspicious glider incident, Maj. Vincent Cooper, an agent of the U.S.A.F. Office of Special Investigations, gets the call. Recently divorced and drinking to excess, Vin knows his job is on the line as he travels to Germany to work with Special Agent Anna Masters. The two of them put together a case that grows to encompass an ever-widening ring of murders and takes them, in a particularly harrowing scene, to Baghdad. A shadowy international organization known as the Establishment appears to be behind the mayhem, and in the process of figuring out the group’s motives, the intrepid Vin gets beaten up, blown up, set on fire and shot a couple of times. Readers will look forward to more of Vin’s exploits in his next outing, A Knife Edge
.

October 29, 2007
Aussie author Rollins’s first novel is a fast-moving, funny thriller with a smart-aleck hero who faces death and worse with a quip on his lips. Military special investigator Maj. Vincent Cooper bounds around the world, dodging death while searching for the reason a four-star general and his son were murdered—a nifty bit of evil that goes all the way to the White House—and encounters grouchy Germans, ruthless and sexy Russians, world-weary Italians, stoned Canadians and, not surprisingly, heroic Australians. The accents, attitudes and genders pose no problem for Foster, who handles them with brisk efficiency. He understands that, with a yarn involving a protagonist who suffers beatings, bullets and broken bones, but keeps plugging away at a global conspiracy with more layers than an artichoke, to pause for an elaborate shift in accent is to risk close scrutiny of the story. Instead, with subtle vocal shifts he’s able to set a breathless pace, keeping the listener on board the roller coaster until it comes to a complete, satisfying stop. Simultaneous release with the Bantam hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 13).