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"Great espionage thriller"

After spending a quarter of the century spying in various hot spots, Kirk "Mac" McGarvey looks forward to spending the rest of his life in the arms of his wife and child. However, the President nominated Mac to replace recently retired CIA Director Roland Murphy, the dream culmination of a dedicated career man. Still Mac wonders if he wants the aggravation as teaching Voltaire seems more appropriate right now. Still Mac accepts the offer and his senate confirmation hearings will convene shortly, but in the interim he is the acting director.

The nomination triggers a brainwashed assassin to rise from sleep with the object to kill Mac. As someone stalks Mac and his family, the acting director begins his own inquiry. He concludes that an inner circle associate is obsessed with his death, but whom? Unbeknownst to Mac is that his deadliest Cold War foe General Baranov has left behind a legacy from his grave, an executioner who silently awaited the trigger to kill Mac.

When it comes to exciting Cold War and Post Cold War dramas, no one provides a more exhilarating and horrifying fiction than David Hagberg renders. His latest espionage thriller has been used before (Manchurian Candidate), but rarely at the level of gripping suspense as THE KILL ZONE contains. The story line is fast-paced while seizing the full attention of the audience because Mac, his wife and their daughter are a warm family that no one wants harmed except for an awakening sleeper agent and a dead Russian. This is a triumph for the Cold War espionage crowd.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted October 15, 2002

The President of the United States has appointed Kirk McGarvey interim director of the CIA while his nomination winds its way through Congressional hearings. But what should have been the culmination of McGarvey's career, has activated a twenty-year-old Russian plot sponsored by his former archenemy, General Baranov. Now, McGarvey is in the Kill Zone. He finds himself part of a plot that does know the Cold War is over, a plot that comes at McGarvey full throttle--from the grave of an enemy McGarvey had buried decades before. Step by inexorable step, the assassin-a sleeper agent for all these years-is awakened from a holding state of mind. Brainwashed by KGB doctors to pull the trigger, the killer has unknowingly waited for a signal that has finally arrived. And as the story races toward its breathtaking climax, it's becoming clearer to McGarvey and his associates that the killer is someone within his inner circle.

A colleague or a friend.

Somebody very close.

Is there anyone McGarvey can trust when trust itself can kill him?