Spy novel fans have a wild ride ahead of them with Andrew Kaplan's thriller
"Scorpion Betrayal." (Harper/450 pages, March 27)
The action begins with a daring assassination. A cold-blooded killer known
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simply as "the Palestinian" has killed the head of Egyptian Internal Security
in a cafe in broad daylight.
Things take a dramatic shift when former CIA agent nicknamed "Scorpion" discovers that the Palestinian has laid his hands on some enriched Uranium 235 and plague bacterium.
The story is a mad dash to prevent terrorism and keep the world safe from the unthinkable - an outbreak of untreatable plague which would dwarf the devastation of the Black Death of the Middle Ages and the release of an atomic bomb in a major metropolitan area.
Kaplan does a decent job in describing the old blood feuds that keep the Middle East mired in violence and fanaticism.
"Scorpion Betrayal" is a top-notch espionage thriller.