Slingshot

May 20, 2013
At the start of Dunn's intelligent but convoluted third thriller featuring MI6 agent Will Cochrane (after 2012's Sentinel), rogue U.S. and Russian military leaders sign a secret pact in 1995 that could lead to a devastating attack on an enemy country, though the details of why and how remain vague. To ensure the lifelong silence of the signatories, conference leader Kurt Schreiber (a former Stasi official now working for Russia) has ordered a "deep-cover sleeper agent" (code name "Kronos") to kill anyone who talks about the plan ("Slingshot"). Fast-forward to the present, when Cochrane uncovers evidence of the documentâand an enormous multilateral effort to ensure it doesn't go public. Schreiber un-leashes Kronos to assassinate the whistleblower, while American, British, and Russian intelligence services engage in all manner of intrigue, double-crossing, and violence. Dunn, a former MI6 agent, clearly knows his tradecraft, but the secret plot is never credibly convincing and most characters never rise above stereotypes, particularly the evil mastermind Schreiber. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, Luigi Bonomi Associates (U.K.).

July 1, 2013
A single piece of paper that could trigger massive fatalities disappears in this cryptic thriller. Ex-MI6 field officer Dunn turns to a plot centering on a doomsday scenario. At an abandoned Soviet military barracks in Berlin in 1995, two Russians and two Americans gather to sign a document for an operation called Slingshot. Slingshot could cause the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and so secret are its plans that the signatories are told they will be killed if they leak details. With the mystery of the plan's contents hovering, proceedings shift to the present and to Gdansk, Poland, where Will Cochrane, the eponymous protagonist of Spycatcher (2011) and Sentinel (2012), waits at night by the Vistula River to connect with a defector from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Allegedly, the defector carries "a single piece of paper" that is "lethal." But no sooner does the defector leap from an arriving Russian ship--in a swift and sharply written chase scene--than he is apparently kidnapped by a group of men in a van, who, it turns out, may be a privately funded group. Cut to Langley, where Flintlock, a CIA group so exclusive even the CIA at large knows not of its existence, assembles a group to retrieve the Russian agent and the vital paper. Eventually, all turn to Cochrane to spearhead the hunt. As usual, the opaque Cochrane remains a swift and deadly killing machine and an aficionado of Assam tea (brewed from leaves). But this time, he enters into--and sometimes becomes lost in--an infinitely more complex game, one played by many hands from several sides and involving enough characters (few entirely trustworthy, of course) to populate a minor Russian novel. Tricky and circuitous as the plotting becomes, it ultimately converges on a moving, personal story. Perhaps more cerebral and less breathtaking then Spycatcher but as rewarding as championship bridge.

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