cover image Cold Front

Cold Front

William H. Lovejoy. Zebra, $4.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8217-3041-6

Lovejoy's lumbering, moralizing tale of international treachery, bureaucratic ineptitude and personal heroism provides fodder for those who see glasnost as a devious Russian plot to lure the U.S. into falling asleep on add ``the''?pk watch. The cat-and mouse game begins when the Soviets deploy a Rube Goldbergper Web.eed scheme to disrupt the world's weather. The exploration of this premise proves a sometimes tedious preamble to the lean, mean closing chapters, which are replete with risk, miscalculation, audacity and g cliff-hanging excitement. Lovejoy, who has written previous novels under the name Hank Bostrum ( Gabriel's Flight ), fills much of the book with elaborate descriptions of organizational behavior and spy planes, of which he apparentlyapparently ?eed has deep knowledge. He displays far less understanding of human behavior in the trumped-up, unconvincing romance between the quintessential field man, Air Force Colonel Brandon Garrett, and the epitome of desk jockeys, State Department analyst Barbara Morris, who is ridiculouslyabsurd used above naive about the realities of spying and diplomacy. (June)