The Machiavelli Covenant

November 13, 2006
Nicholas Marten, the ex-LAPD detective who played a major role in Folsom's The Exile
(2004), pursues an international conspiracy in this frenetic page-turner long on action but short on plausibility. When an old love of Marten's, Caroline Parsons, dies of a mysterious infection shortly after her congressman husband and son perish in a plane accident, her dying words set Marten on the trail of a South African bioterrorist. The former cop soon finds himself allied with another man trying to foil a cabal bent on creating a new world order—the U.S. president himself, John Henry Harris. Harris flees his Secret Service protection after rejecting the plan of virtually his whole cabinet to assassinate the leaders of France and Germany and replace them with people willing to launch biological warfare on most of the Middle East. Unconvincing hairbreadth escapes and the failure to explore underlying political issues make for a routine thriller.

Jeremy Davidson reads this freight train of a suspenseful drama with word-perfect panache. He follows the action through most of Europe, never hesitating from language to language or accent to accent. A cabal of the powerful, The Covenant, is set on world domination, as well as the destruction of the Moslem world. Only three people stand between them and their goal--the president of the United States, a landscape designer with a hidden past, and a French female photojournalist. They're on the run, unable to trust anyone--not the vice president, not the Cabinet of the United States, not the CIA. Multiple twists and seemingly endless dangerous situations keep the listener glued to the speakers. B.H.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine