Word: thriller
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...short, slick spy thriller had been written to order by Russia's famed detective novelist, Julian Semyonov-the Soviet Ian Fleming. Spread over five columns of Izvestiya last week, it had some of the suspense but none of the humor of a James Bond story. The tale began as Martha Peterson, 32, a tall, blonde vice consul in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, drove her car to a deserted street in the Soviet capital. Quickly changing from a white dress to a black outfit that would meld into the shadows, she boarded in rapid succession a bus, a streetcar...
Journalist Bill Buckley likes it out in the cold, out where the Red menace blows. Novelist Buckley finds the world more ambiguous. His new espionage thriller stars the Buckley-like hero Blackford Oakes. He is the same CIA man of the author's previous novel, Saving the Queen. The time of Stained Glass is 1952, the place West Germany; the plot backlights Buckley's faith in Western culture and his embattled vision of its decline in an age of nuclear realism and détente...
...that June is here, junk movies are busting out all over. Capricorn One is the first decent one of the lot: it kills two hours with a breathless progression of incredible plot twists and daredevil aerial stunts. Even at its silliest-which is quite silly-this thriller makes The Greek Tycoon seem like a slow yacht to China. At its best, Capricorn One almost matches the trashy highs of Coma, the junk movie of the year to date...
Catch Me: Kill Me by William H. Hallahan (Bobbs-Merrill; $7.95). New Jersey-based Hallahan, 52, a former adman, won his Edgar with a thriller that scurries from the lower depths of Manhattan to the higher reaches of Washington, D.C., and Moscow, with a side trip to the underside of Rome. Its main sleuths, a burnt-out CIA agent and a doughty Immigration official, set out separately to solve the mystery of the disappearance of a minor Russian poet whose scattered dactyls are the clues to a major East-West confrontation. A masterpiece of bamboozlement, Catch Me is a kind...
...Baby Sitters by John Salisbury (Atheneum; $9.95). John Salisbury is the well-guarded nom de plume of a fortyish British historian, political writer and playwright-which adds spice to his first political thriller right from page 1. It is the story of an Orwellian attempt (in 1981) to turn Britain into a fascist state, led by a fanatical Muslim group riding high on Arab oil and abetted by some of England's leading politicians. The conspiracy is defused by Bill Ellison, a brilliant Fleet Street digger whose investigative team resembles the London Sunday Times's muckraking groups. Salisbury...