Patrick Anderson
David Stone's first novel is well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny, but most of all it is violent.
— The Washington Post
Tucson Citizen (Arizona)
A fast and terrifying ride.
Washington Post
Well-written, intelligent and sometimes funny... show[s] us what life is really like on the front lines.
Booklist
A smoothly written spy thriller...packed with the kind of nitty-gritty detail that draws espionage fans. A promising debut.
Military.com
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.
Entertainment Weekly
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.
Kirkus Reviews
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
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
