Showing results by author "David Blake" in Thriller & Suspense

In the wake of the Vietnam debacle, when the mighty USA was humiliated by Soviet-backed Vietcong, the CIA plotted to drag the USSR into a "Russian Vietnam" in Afghanistan. The plan was such a success it led ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, 40 years on, as Russia limps, scarred and crippled, from the battlefields of Kherson, Donetsk, and Kharkiv, Colonel Alexandrina Vitsin swears to drag the USA into an American Ukraine.

To most people, the threat of a nuclear holocaust was something that belonged to the years of the Cold War, something they associated with the United States and the Soviet Union, something that was laid to rest by Gorbachev and Reagan, back in the ‘80s, when the Berlin Wall came down. So when Alia Gallin’s murder was reported to ODIN agent Alex Mason, the last thing he thought of was that this could be part of the build up to a nuclear war. All Mason could think of was his rage, finding the killers and punishing them.

The Russians have a special way of gambling. They take a revolver and they place one round the chambers and spin it. Then they take it in turns to put the gun to their heads and pull the trigger. It’s called Russian Roulette. Now they have a new, deadlier way of playing it.

The world population is hurtling toward nine billion; some say more than the planet can support. Two titanic blocks rule that population – East and West – bound together in a global economy - and a secret, war to the death. Never has so much been at stake, never has the prize of absolute power been more seductive. And never have the leaders of these titanic blocks been quite so insane. Insane enough to invoke the Son of Hell, to bring the war out of the shadows and fire down from Heaven; and count the dead not in dozens but millions.

Saul Epstein was used to trouble. When you’re the world’s most successful investigative journalist, and you devote your life to exposing the crimes of the great and the powerful, you learn to expect trouble. That’s why Saul was a recluse, that’s why he had no intimate circle, no close friends….

Helen Troy is in the race to become the first Female President of the United States. She is pretty, feminine, assertive and a guy’s guy kind of girl, who smokes cigars and drinks whisky with the best of’em. Everybody loves her; but nobody has heard of her till now and she has an uphill fight against some experienced heavy hitters. But that’s not her biggest problem.

There is a time bomb ticking down toward a global extinction event. The bomb has a name, and everybody knows where it is. In fact, people pay to go and see it, and have picnics around it. It’s called the Yellowstone Caldera, and when it next blows it will probably take out mankind.

When a leading international financier is murdered in his Beverly Hills mansion, at first it looks like just another daemon at work in the City of Angels. But when the ritual nature of the killing emerges, the FBI takes an interest. And then the international connections start to emerge: the European Commission, high-ranking officials in Hong Kong...and Iran. That’s when the file gets passed to ODIN and Alex Mason.