The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen

October 24, 2011
Leading man Ty Hunter, “the number one box-office star in the world,” uses his good looks, acting ability, and celebrity the way other action heroes use their ninja warrior and advanced weaponry skills in this well-crafted but subdued thriller from Caplan (Grace and Favor). At the Cannes film festival, Ty attends a party aboard a yacht owned by a wealthy businessman, Ian Santal, who with the help of Philip Frost, an American in Russia working to decommission surplus nuclear weapons, has managed to steal three of the nukes. Soon after the party, where Ty falls under the spell of Ian’s ward, the beautiful Isabella Cavill, the U.S. president asks Ty, a former covert operative, to lead an investigation into the theft of the nukes. The rather tepid action that follows will lead readers to hope for more gunplay, explosions, and thrills in Ty’s next adventure. Former president Bill Clinton, a roommate of the author’s at Georgetown University, provides an introduction.

November 1, 2011
Caplan's (Line of Chance, 1979, etc.) adventure novel shoots for high concept by assigning hero duties to a soldier turned film star turned spy. Ty Hunter is an accidental actor who made it big in Tinseltown. He was a special-ops–tested military intelligence officer recovering from injuries when he met a film producer. But Caplan doesn't rush Hunter into play. First there's a stop in Kansas City to meet Wilhelm Claussen, owner of an international construction company. Claussen's ready to back out of a deal with a Russian group. The scene shifts to a missile installation near Russia's Sea of Azov where warheads are being removed. Next it's the Cannes film festival. There Ty enters the narrative and encounters Ian Santal, once a science guru, once a money manipulator, and now a billionaire financier. Also on the scene are Santal's protege, Philip Frost, part of the official nuclear-weapons watchdog team at Azoz, and Isabella Cavill, celebrated jewelry designer, Santal's goddaughter and the novel's requisite love interest. Ty is next called to Camp David to meet the president and his top security adviser. They enlist Hunter to go undercover. Rumors are circulating that Santal has nefarious contacts. It develops that Santal's megalomaniacal idea is to assure peace by reframing the balance of nuclear power--while earning a tidy profit. Ty's mission-almost-impossible is to discover if Santal threat is real. Caplan litters the pages with exotic locations, beautiful people and more than enough scene-setting, exposition, sparkling conversation and back story to present a tutorial on the lives of the mega-rich. The denouement comes at Gibraltar, where good guys and bad guys meet aboard Santal's yacht, Surpass. That's a fitting moniker, since everything within the story involves stratospheric superlatives--"sleek furnishings," "most amazing stones," "great eclectic mansion," "far too sophisticated." Characters are stock players, including Middle Easterners with disposable billions, a quartet of computer nerds and a bad guy escaping to plague Hunter in Caplan's next Bondian escapade. An adventure where atmosphere dominates action.

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September 1, 2011

Founder of the Pen/Faulkner Award for fiction and the author of three novels, Caplan jumps into frothier territory with this thriller featuring covert operative-turned-Hollywood superstar Ty Hunter. Asked to help keep a bunch of nuclear warheads from passing into the wrong hands, Hunter uses all his actorly skills as he goes up against billionaire Ian Santal. Sounds promising, and you can't ignore the introduction by President Bill Clinton.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2011
Caplan takes a long time between novels (his last, Grace and Favor, was published in 1998), but this one was definitely worth the wait. It has a kick-ass premise. Ty Hunter, once an intelligence officer and now a major movie star (it's a lot more plausible than it sounds), is tasked by the U.S. president to find out whether billionaire Ian Santel has anything to do with some nukes stolen by a now-deceased Russian colonel. The novel boasts great, James Bondstyle supporting charactersthe colorful Santel; his alluring goddaughter, Isabella Cavill, who designs expensive jewelry and seems to have designs on Ty; Santel's prot'g' and henchman, Philip Frost. And it has a story that, with its action and intrigue, is guaranteed to keep readers glued to their seats. This is the kind of novel that the superb Trevanian might have written; his Jonathan Hemlock, art professor, mountaineer, and assassin, is surely no more nor less imaginatively conceived and executed than Ty Hunter. An excellent, don't-dare-miss-it kind of thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)