Lion of Judah: A Novel of the Mossad

The author, a disenchanted Israeli agent whose bestselling nonfiction expose of the Mossad ( By Way of Deception ) caused scandal and litigation in 1990, now turns his hand to espionage fiction, with unremarkable results. Mossad case officer Natan Stone is called in to investigate terrorist activity that threatens to undermine Middle East peace talks. Meanwhile, Karl Reinhart, a former member of East Germany's dreaded Stasi, stages a fake suicide and goes to work for the Syrian secret police. In an effort to protect their Mossad mole, Reinhart and his Syrian allies plot to frame Natan, who must uncover the real traitor in order to clear himself. The complex plotting and in-depth detail about the inner workings of different secret police organizations are absorbing, but the dialogue is leaden, and such hackneyed flourishes as dental-chair torture and James Bond-style communications devices make a basically sound story seem rather silly. Many found Ostrovsky's nonfiction a little too close to fiction; this first novel is a little too close to a pastiche of genre conventions. (Sept.)