From the new thrillers

Press, 22 June 1985, Page 20

From the new thrillers

The Second Saladin. By Stephen Hunter. Fontana/CoUins, 1985. 416 pp. $7.95 (paperback). Inside the long, long war between Iran and Iraq lurks an even older and more bitter struggle—the war of the Kurds for freedom from their political masters on both sides of the border. A decade ago the Kurds enjoyed a good deal of help from the United States. More recently they have been betrayed on all sides. Take a fanatical Kurdish assassin, educated and trained by the United States. Then turn him loose looking for revenge against the Americans who deserted him. The result is a manhunt turned inside out, that ranges through Mexico and across the United States. It makes an exciting and plausible offering from a talented new writer of thrillers. Rubicon One. By Dennis Jones. Arrow/Wholesale Books, 1985. 309 pp. $7.95 (paperback). The theme is familiar, but the handling is well above the ordinary. Israel’s enemies have access to nuclear weapons. A new, hard-line ruler has taken over in the Kremlin. The C.l.A.’s computer is predicting Armageddon. Nuclear threat becomes nuclear reality and as the first bombs burst in the Middle East, cooler heads in the Soviet Union and the United States try desperately to pull back from the final devastation. Those who like to shiver at dire predictions of pre-emptive strikes will get an extra quiver from this one.

Samaritan. By Philippe van Rjndt. Futura/Macdonald, 1985. 406 pp. $9.95 (paperback). Ask a computer to come up with a plot that includes as many elements as possible intended to produce a “bestseller’ — and “Samaritan” could be the

result. It has surgical triumphs by an American doctor operating on a Soviet leader and a Pope; the Polish resistance movement; a gifted crippled child; flashbacks to Nazi extermination camps; plots in the Kremlin; a woman as American Secretary of State; hairsbreadth scapes; a breach in the Berlin Wall; a protracted papal election; dark deeds by Israeli intelligence officers; a C.I.A. conspiracy of silence; a macabre snowplough murder in New York. Only bizarre sex is missing from current best-seller ingredients. There is still plenty to swamp the reader, and the story is just ingenious enough to be worth finishing, even if large chunks of the medical and reiglious detail have to be skipped.

Big Bear, Little Bear. By David Brierley. Pan, 1985. 223 pp. $7.95 (paperback). Big Bear is the Soviet Union; Little Bear is Berlin. The time is 1948 and Stalin is consolidating the new Russian Empire in Eastern Europe. Brierley is a master at grafting fiction on to history in a manner that leaves a nagging feeling he might be documenting real events. With his deft pursuit of moles high in British Intelligence he can hardly avoid comparison with John Le Carre. He stands up well as a new master of the triple cross describing a den of bears that would be no place for a Goldilocks.