Deadline for Final Art

In this taut mystery/thriller, Charlie Salt, associate art director for the National Geographic Society magazine, finds himself caught up in a scheme revolving around the last gasps of the Cold War. Salt is putting together the layout for a story on Star Wars, in which he plans to use an illustration of an X-ray laser missile, a forbidden weapon being built by a dissident Pentagon group. When a Society guard is killed, his researcher disappears and he finds his house being watched, Salt enlists the aid of Nikolai Tsiokolvsky, an old friend who is cultural secretary at the Soviet embassy and, incidentally, a member of the KGB, which wants news of the forbidden weapon to circulate. After an attempt on his life, Salt, a widower with two children, begins to fight back, assisted by photographer Jillian Ansara, with whom he begins to fall in love, breaking the internal ice that has frozen his heart since his wife's accidental death. Meanwhile, the police pursue their own slow, methodical investigations. Adkins, a writer of children's books, has produced a brisk, savvy thriller, spiced with Washington and magazine-publishing details. The reader will look forward to promised future appearances of the very likable Salt. (Aug.)