The Echelon Vendetta

by David Stone

Overview

CIA agent Micah Dalton is a "cleaner." He takes care of other agents' mistakes.

When a friend and mentor commits a grotesque suicide, Dalton's investigation reveals a complex conspiracy involving drug trafficking, covert operations, and personal vendettas. He's lead into the snare of a madman, into the arms of a beautiful, mysterious stranger, and into a conspiracy within his own agency.

Dalton knows only one thing for certain: this job is going to get very messy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101215159
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/15/2007
Series:	A Micah Dalton Thriller
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Stone is a former British army infantry officer. Much of his service was in Germany, both with and alongside soldiers of the Bundeswehr in peacetime and on operations. He became a military historian in 2002 and is the author of the authoritative works Hitler's Army: The Men, Machines and Organisation, 1939–1945 (2009) and Fighting for the Fatherland: The Story of the German Soldier from 1648 to the Present Day (2006).

What People are Saying About This

Ridley Pearson

Combines the eloquence of Lehane's Mystic River, the plotting of the best Ludlum novels, and the brains of a LeCarre.

John Lescroart

A terrific read. The Echelon Vendetta is terrifying, stylish, action-packed.

From the Publisher

"Vivid characters and spellbinding, heart-pounding, hallucinogenic plotting...You'll love this book." -RIDLEY PEARSON "Well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny...show[s] us what life is really like on the front lines." -WASHINGTON POST

Editorial Reviews

David Stone's first novel is well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny, but most of all it is violent.
— The Washington Post

Patrick Anderson

A fast and terrifying ride.

Tucson Citizen (Arizona)

Well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny... show[s] us what life is really like on the front lines.

Washington Post

A smoothly written spy thriller...packed with the kind of nitty-gritty detail that draws espionage fans. A promising debut.

Booklist

Stone not only knows the espionage scene but also how to plot a complicated, fast-paced thriller. Take [it] for an adrenaline-fueled test drive.

Military.com

As he follows a trail from Tuscany to London to CIA headquarters to the Rocky Mountains, Dalton encounters government spooks, Native American mysticism, hallucinogens, and gruesome violence with which he seems creepily comfortable.

Entertainment Weekly

Hallucinogens, Indians, orchids, butchery, treason, ghosts and politics pop up in Venice, London, Washington, Simi Valley, Butte and the high western desert in a smashing debut thriller by a pseudonymous former military intelligence officer. Micah Dalton is a "cleaner" for the CIA. Cleaners go in and tidy up messes, and the mess left by the grotesque suicide of Dalton's friend and colleague Porter Naumann is a doozy. Naumann was found outside a chapel in a Tuscan hamlet having apparently ripped out his own throat. The shrewd Carabinieri intelligence officer on the scene, Major Alessio Brancati, recognizes that someone or something drove Naumann to suicide, making the spy's death a murder. Brancati allows Dalton to follow up on the very few clues associated with the murder, but he turns up again when the investigation takes Dalton to Naumann's old haunts in Venice, where the agent falls victim to a near-fatal dose of the same vicious psychotropic drug that figured in Naumann's death. The effects of the drug dog Dalton for the rest of the book as Naumann's sardonic, pajama-clad ghost materializes whenever things get hairy-which they frequently do. Dalton enjoys a brief poignant flirtation with a gorgeous Venetion dottoressa but is called much too soon to London where Naumann's unpleasant family was found butchered in their Belgravia home. The intercontinental fiend seems to be an extraordinarily tall, long-haired, American Indian in silver tipped cowboy boots who has also been doing in a number of minor ex-CIA operatives in the western states. Dalton saw his backside in Venice, but the man has the power to cloud cameras, a bit of technology available only to the very best spies, and it isthat connection Dalton must unravel, a process that takes him back to the Agency and a long-hidden Company disaster that set the grizzly plot in motion. Fast-moving, smart, sexy and alarming. Everything you want in a thriller. First printing of 75,000

Kirkus Reviews

"Vivid characters and spellbinding, heart-pounding, hallucinogenic plotting...You'll love this book." -RIDLEY PEARSON "Well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny...show[s] us what life is really like on the front lines." -WASHINGTON POST

From the Publisher