In Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact, Covert-One, the president's personal, super-secret agency formed after some recent virus-driven chaos (_The Hades Factor_, co-written with Gayle Lynds), is staffed by an unknown number of international covert operatives, including Dr Jon Smith, late of the USAMRIID. And a good thing, too, because someone's helped themselves to Russia's share of the world's last two stores of the smallpox virus, an eradicated yet hideously deadly bug with no ready vaccine.
That the pox was nabbed and who nabbed it is clear enough early on. Why such a seemingly large and disparate cadre of global citizens (keeping the players straight puts one in mind of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine) chose to pinch the bug and for what end are the novel's driving questions. Freelance Serbian uber-nasty, Ivan Beria, is among the apparent perpetrators as are Dylan Reed and Adam Treloar of NASA, Tony Price, the head of the super-secret NSA and a bunch of Russians. The good-guys roster claims Smith, Covert-One's head Nathaniel Klein, Briton and ex-SAS man Peter Howell, Smith's deceased girlfriend's sister and CIA operative Randi Russell, the girlfriend's best friend, backup shuttle astronaut Megan Olson and another bunch of Russians. Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe, cat-and-mousing after the pox and in so doing careen through a classically speedy and Ludlumesque (if coincidence dependent) plot leaving large numbers of efficiently dispatched corpses in their wake. --_Michael Hudson_
Review
Praise for Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor 'The new team has a pop hit on their hands that should bounce right up the bestseller list' Kirkus Review
Like "Fellini's Roma", the jacket cover here says "Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact" - a device we hope doesn't catch on. Clean-prosist and coauthor Shelby wrote "Days of Drums "(1996)..Ludlum now hops between Covert-One original trade paperbacks bounced out with way-second-billed coauthors ("The Hades Factor", with Gayle Lynds, 2000) and hardcovers written solo ("The Prometheus Deception", 2000). Covert-One is the president's personal, supersecret intelligence group unknown even to CIA, NSA, the Secret Service, or Pentagon. Bowing in as Ludlum & Co.'s fresh new hero in "Hades "was Colonel Jon Smith, Army doctor and virologist, and his beloved Dr. Sophia Russell, molecular biologist, who died during the outbreak of a new virus that might have wiped out mankind. "Cassandra "picks up Smith a year later, burying a diamond ring under Sophia's gravestone, where he meets Dr. Megan Olson, a biochemist who has switched from jobs with the NIH and WHO to being the first alternate on the next space-shuttle mission. Will she be his new love, or will it be Sophia's sister in Moscow, Randi Russell, who may be CIA? The twist this time is smallpox. The virus has been wiped out, but both the US and Russia keep small quantities to work with if needed. The villain is a nut who wants the Russian sample. But smallpox is too slow-acting for bio-warfare, though up in the microgravity of space, "whoosh! "its speed and growth turn horrendous - if only he could get the sample up to the space lab. No sooner does Smith get word that the Russian sample has gone astray than "pow! "it's blastoff into Ludlumland with bodies dropping in fiery fusillades. Even teams of assassins aren't safe, being killed off by their own bosses. And when the bugs make it into outer space, mankind faces the big chill..Shaken readers may recite the Twenty-fourth Psalm each page. Anyone for the Apocalypse?.. (Kirkus Reviews)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
In Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact, Covert-One, the president's personal, super-secret agency formed after some recent virus-driven chaos (_The Hades Factor_, co-written with Gayle Lynds), is staffed by an unknown number of international covert operatives, including Dr Jon Smith, late of the USAMRIID. And a good thing, too, because someone's helped themselves to Russia's share of the world's last two stores of the smallpox virus, an eradicated yet hideously deadly bug with no ready vaccine.
That the pox was nabbed and who nabbed it is clear enough early on. Why such a seemingly large and disparate cadre of global citizens (keeping the players straight puts one in mind of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine) chose to pinch the bug and for what end are the novel's driving questions. Freelance Serbian uber-nasty, Ivan Beria, is among the apparent perpetrators as are Dylan Reed and Adam Treloar of NASA, Tony Price, the head of the super-secret NSA and a bunch of Russians. The good-guys roster claims Smith, Covert-One's head Nathaniel Klein, Briton and ex-SAS man Peter Howell, Smith's deceased girlfriend's sister and CIA operative Randi Russell, the girlfriend's best friend, backup shuttle astronaut Megan Olson and another bunch of Russians. Suffice it to say that Smith and company trot the globe, cat-and-mousing after the pox and in so doing careen through a classically speedy and Ludlumesque (if coincidence dependent) plot leaving large numbers of efficiently dispatched corpses in their wake. --_Michael Hudson_
Review
Praise for Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor 'The new team has a pop hit on their hands that should bounce right up the bestseller list' Kirkus Review
Like "Fellini's Roma", the jacket cover here says "Robert Ludlum's The Cassandra Compact" - a device we hope doesn't catch on. Clean-prosist and coauthor Shelby wrote "Days of Drums "(1996)..Ludlum now hops between Covert-One original trade paperbacks bounced out with way-second-billed coauthors ("The Hades Factor", with Gayle Lynds, 2000) and hardcovers written solo ("The Prometheus Deception", 2000). Covert-One is the president's personal, supersecret intelligence group unknown even to CIA, NSA, the Secret Service, or Pentagon. Bowing in as Ludlum & Co.'s fresh new hero in "Hades "was Colonel Jon Smith, Army doctor and virologist, and his beloved Dr. Sophia Russell, molecular biologist, who died during the outbreak of a new virus that might have wiped out mankind. "Cassandra "picks up Smith a year later, burying a diamond ring under Sophia's gravestone, where he meets Dr. Megan Olson, a biochemist who has switched from jobs with the NIH and WHO to being the first alternate on the next space-shuttle mission. Will she be his new love, or will it be Sophia's sister in Moscow, Randi Russell, who may be CIA? The twist this time is smallpox. The virus has been wiped out, but both the US and Russia keep small quantities to work with if needed. The villain is a nut who wants the Russian sample. But smallpox is too slow-acting for bio-warfare, though up in the microgravity of space, "whoosh! "its speed and growth turn horrendous - if only he could get the sample up to the space lab. No sooner does Smith get word that the Russian sample has gone astray than "pow! "it's blastoff into Ludlumland with bodies dropping in fiery fusillades. Even teams of assassins aren't safe, being killed off by their own bosses. And when the bugs make it into outer space, mankind faces the big chill..Shaken readers may recite the Twenty-fourth Psalm each page. Anyone for the Apocalypse?.. (Kirkus Reviews)