Showing results by author "Brian Freemantle" in All Categories

His grandfather was a lawman too. That’s how Charles O’Farrell rationalizes his work. He keeps a picture of his ancestor by his bed, a faded sepia portrait of a short, plain-looking man made remarkable only by the long-barreled Colt strapped to his hip. His grandfather killed to make the frontier safe—O’Farrell has the faded newspaper clippings to prove it. In the service of America, O’Farrell kills too. But his killings never make the front page.

Walter Farr has done well for himself. One of the top investment counselors in New York, he has earned a fortune and amassed everything he could ever want, except a close relationship with his son, Howard. When the boy’s mother died, Walter did what he could for their child, but each year Howard pulled further and further away. Even so, Walter never expected something like this. Howard has been arrested for importing cocaine. The charge is not trivial - Howard’s crime could put him away for life - and to get him out of it Walter will do the unthinkable.

The CIA sends Hartman because he knows the target’s face. Hartman spent two years in Bergen-Belsen and knows camp commandant Fritz Lang’s face better than anyone. The Nazi has taken up residence in a Panamanian port, supplementing his realtor’s salary with monthly infusions from a numbered Swiss account. Despite Lang’s extensive plastic surgery, Hartman recognizes him. It’s a face he could never forget, and it’s time to make him pay.

Adrian Dodds is a man without hobbies, friends, or family, who works a very peculiar job. Though he looks like a pencil pusher, he is a British counter-intelligence agent. In his own quiet, bureaucratic way, Dodds is vital to the security of the United Kingdom. His latest assignment is debriefing Viktor Pavel, a Soviet aeronautics genius who escapes his handlers to become the Cold War’s most high-profile defector. Can he be trusted, or was he sent over as part of an elaborate Russian ruse?

In Moscow a serial killer is on the loose - taking his victims' hair as a souvenir, carefully removing the buttons from their clothes. For Militia Colonel Dimitri Danilov, a good cop with a bad personal life, catching this madman is a matter of pride. But then the killer brings the U.S. government into the case. The latest victim is an American embassy economist, the beautiful niece of a powerful U.S. senator, and a woman with kinky secrets of her own. Now Danilov must team up with elite FBI agent Bill Cowley.

The people in the car don’t recognize Mary as anything special. They see the skinny ten-year-old as just another young girl on the streets of Brussels, not as the daughter of a US ambassador. The black car stops and Mary, used to having a chauffeur, climbs aboard. Before she knows what’s happening, she is on her way to a mansion in Antwerp with a specially designed, child-sized cell. She has been abducted. Now, a team of FBI agents, along with Europe’s foremost psychological profiler, are on the hunt for the girl’s captors.

Peterson is bewildered by the satellite photos in front of him. As head of the CIA, he is never supposed to be surprised, but what could be happening in Chad alarms him. The pictures show a small research installation, nestled in the African jungle, where a West German company claims to be building a base to launch communications satellites for use by developing African nations. But Peterson’s analysts tell him that the ordinary, innocent-looking silo is just the size necessary to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile into outer space.

With eviction looming, St. Ives searches for a big payday and a rare book. Philip St. Ives has no love for New York's drafty, broken-down Adelphi Hotel, but he is in no mood to be evicted from it. His cash dwindling, he is happy to learn about a job that calls for his specific talents as a mediator between thieves and their victims. It sounds like the set-up to a bad joke: A thief, an insurance salesman, and the Library of Congress call Philip's lawyer to ask about a stolen copy of Pliny's Historia Naturalis. To find it, Philip will risk becoming history himself.

Everyone knows Hawkins is not the reporter his father - a famous war correspondent - was. Hawkins’s fondness for drink disqualifies him from the kind of reporting that is his birthright. But with a father like his, the newspaper cannot let him go. Instead, the board has asked him to write a biography of his father - a fluff project designed to keep Hawkins out of trouble. But the assignment leads to unsuspected, shocking revelations.

In 1990—after the Iron Curtain has lifted but before East and West Germany become one—an uneasy truce exists between the spy agencies of Berlin’s two halves. As the governments of the divided state negotiate reunification, espionage continues quietly. That calm is about to explode. An English agent, on a routine collection of microfilm on the other side of Checkpoint Charlie, is arrested for spying, and all hell threatens to break loose.

Richard Parnell is one of the leading minds in gene therapy research, and he expects the job at Dubette, Inc., to be his first step to a Nobel Prize. But when he arrives at the American pharmaceutical giant, he finds himself shut out of the main avenues of research, isolated from the cutting edge in a way he has never been before.

The KGB decides to use agent Otto Reimann to seduce Elke Meyer, the personal assistant to a top West German Cabinet member, to give over classified information, but Moscow does not count on the unpredictability of love.

The Soviet Union is in turmoil. With the election of Gorbachev have come new ideas about freedom, compassion, and openness - ideas that leave no place for the dark machinations of the KGB. Reform is coming to the Soviet intelligence service, unless Victor Ivanovich Kazin can stop it. Kazin is one of the Old Guard, and an agent doesn’t survive three decades in the KGB without being relentless. He is a liar, a cheat, a backstabber - and he is proud of it.

Eddie Franks had it all: A good family, business success and the respect it brings...and a childhood rivalry he'd never overcome - not even marrying Nicky Scargo's sister had helped. Now Eddie knows he's in trouble: the backers Nicky has brought into Eddie's hotel chain are unquestionably mob, the FBI has accused him of laundering money...and Scargo's been murdered. Eddie Franks has a choice: go to jail or risk his life by testifying.

The treaty is so simple that the American president can hardly believe his luck. In exchange for a few million tons of grain, the Russians, gripped by famine, will withdraw all troops and missiles from Eastern Europe. What’s more, this great success comes in an election year! It’s too good to be true—and something is about to go wrong.

Death is no obstacle for Harold Taylor. Since the 18th century he has been reincarnated into a handful of identities. He won fame as an eye surgeon in Victorian England, established St. Louis’s first brothels as an American settler, and survived the trenches of the First World War only to be executed in a court martial. But despite his different lives, one thing always remains the same: Harold Taylor is a murderer. Blood is the secret to Taylor’s reincarnation. At each rebirth, he marks for death those who wronged him in the past, and by spilling their blood he guarantees himself another try at life. This time he has a new plan....

Josef Bultova nearly died in a Russian prison camp. Once one of the Soviet Union’s most adept international negotiators, his work with the West grew so intimate that the suspicious Politburo exiled him to Siberia. The meager food, heavy work, and bitter cold took its toll, sapping his strength until, just as he was sure he could no longer go on, the Politburo let him go.

Six Israeli commandos land on a lakeshore in Austria, hunting for something that has been hidden underwater for over thirty years. The lake holds many secrets left behind by the Nazi high command as their regime crumbled in 1945. There are millions of dollars in international currency, bonds, and gold bullion, but the commandos want none of it. They have come for boxes of files - containing information about the hiding places of every Nazi war criminal who evaded judgment at Nuremberg.

Harry Rudd has put his past behind him. He has forgotten his impoverished roots, his carefree college days, and his life with Angela. Forgetting Angela has been the hardest, but Rudd does what he can to keep his wife - who died giving birth to their first child - out of his mind. It is time to focus on business. With Angela’s death, Rudd inherited Best Rest, once a modest chain of Boston motels, now a global hospitality empire. For a company of such size, growth is crucial, and Rudd aims to expand quickly.

The Great Merlini waits impatiently at the door of the Hotel Astor. Inspector Church is late for his meeting with the famed magician, with whom he consults when homicide cases venture outside the realm of the possible. A ventriloquist has attempted suicide in the wake of his wife’s mysterious strangulation. Among the suspects are a snake charmer, a nine-foot giant, a tattooed man, and a gaggle of crap players - and this is one of Merlini’s simple cases.