Wildcat

Strategy and counterstrategy are the most effective weapons in this adroit, densely plotted spy novel by the author of Firefox and Winter Hawk. A 40-year grudge between two opposing intelligence agents finally explodes when the son of one attempts to defect and is killed accidentally in the process. Sir Kenneth Aubrey, a crusty, longtime British operative, knows that Kurt Winterbach's death will not go unpunished; his mother, Brigitte, is an inexorably vengeful power in East German intelligence. In her rage and grief, she engineers a retributive mission against Aubrey's foster son, an ex-soldier currently in Nepal, where he learns that a major military coup by the U.S.S.R. is imminent. In combining a thriller of international military action with a more intimate and compelling spy-versus-spy yarn, Thomas strains to keep every storyline going simultaneously, but he dissipates the tension with too many cutaways to the seething Brigitte as she plots her next move. Espionage enthusiasts, however, will enjoy the elaborate machinations of his unusually complex plot. BOMC and Mysterious Book Club alternates. (Jan.)