Slingshot (Spycatcher Series #3)

by Matthew Dunn

Overview

Matthew Dunn uses his experience as a former MI6 field officer to bring transfixing realism to Slingshot, his third Spycatcher novel featuring Will Cochrane—MI6’s, and now the CIA’s, most prized asset and deadliest weapon.
 
In Slingshot, Cochrane is ordered to recover a mysterious document stolen by a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SRV) traitor working for a former high-ranking East German Stasi officer. The officer, years before, had instigated a secret pact between Russian and U.S. generals. The agreement stipulated that should it be broken, an assassin would immediately be set loose after an unknown target.
 
The SRV has sent their own version of Cochrane, a cold-blooded, brilliant operative, to retrieve the document, pitting spycatcher against spycatcher.
 
Slingshot, with its cat-and-mouse espionage, brutal action, and complex protagonist, is a must-read for fans of Robert Ludlum and Lee Child.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062038081
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/25/2013
Series:	Spycatcher (Will Cochrane) Series , #3
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	154,277
File size:	608 KB

About the Author

As an MI6 field officer, Matthew Dunn recruited and ran agents, coordinated and participated in special operations, and acted in deep-cover roles throughout the world. He operated in environments where, if captured, he would have been executed. Dunn was trained in all aspects of intelligence collection, deep- cover deployments, small arms, explosives, military unarmed combat, surveillance, and infiltration.

Medals are never awarded to modern MI6 officers, but Dunn was the recipient of a rare personal commendation from the secretary of state for work he did on one mission, which was deemed so significant that it directly influenced the success of a major international incident.

During his time in MI6, Matthew conducted approximately seventy missions. All of them were successful. He currently lives in England, where he is at work on his next novel.

Editorial Reviews

At the start of Dunn's intelligent but convoluted third thriller featuring MI6 agent Will Cochrane (after 2012's Sentinel), rogue U.S. and Russian military leaders sign a secret pact in 1995 that could lead to a devastating attack on an enemy country, though the details of why and how remain vague. To ensure the lifelong silence of the signatories, conference leader Kurt Schreiber (a former Stasi official now working for Russia) has ordered a "deep-cover sleeper agent" (code name "Kronos") to kill anyone who talks about the plan ("Slingshot"). Fast-forward to the present, when Cochrane uncovers evidence of the document—and an enormous multilateral effort to ensure it doesn't go public. Schreiber un-leashes Kronos to assassinate the whistleblower, while American, British, and Russian intelligence services engage in all manner of intrigue, double-crossing, and violence. Dunn, a former MI6 agent, clearly knows his tradecraft, but the secret plot is never credibly convincing and most characters never rise above stereotypes, particularly the evil mastermind Schreiber. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, Luigi Bonomi Associates (U.K.). (July)

Publishers Weekly

A single piece of paper that could trigger massive fatalities disappears in this cryptic thriller. Ex-MI6 field officer Dunn turns to a plot centering on a doomsday scenario. At an abandoned Soviet military barracks in Berlin in 1995, two Russians and two Americans gather to sign a document for an operation called Slingshot. Slingshot could cause the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and so secret are its plans that the signatories are told they will be killed if they leak details. With the mystery of the plan's contents hovering, proceedings shift to the present and to Gdansk, Poland, where Will Cochrane, the eponymous protagonist of Spycatcher (2011) and Sentinel (2012), waits at night by the Vistula River to connect with a defector from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Allegedly, the defector carries "a single piece of paper" that is "lethal." But no sooner does the defector leap from an arriving Russian ship--in a swift and sharply written chase scene--than he is apparently kidnapped by a group of men in a van, who, it turns out, may be a privately funded group. Cut to Langley, where Flintlock, a CIA group so exclusive even the CIA at large knows not of its existence, assembles a group to retrieve the Russian agent and the vital paper. Eventually, all turn to Cochrane to spearhead the hunt. As usual, the opaque Cochrane remains a swift and deadly killing machine and an aficionado of Assam tea (brewed from leaves). But this time, he enters into--and sometimes becomes lost in--an infinitely more complex game, one played by many hands from several sides and involving enough characters (few entirely trustworthy, of course) to populate a minor Russian novel. Tricky and circuitous as the plotting becomes, it ultimately converges on a moving, personal story. Perhaps more cerebral and less breathtaking then Spycatcher but as rewarding as championship bridge.

Kirkus Reviews