Remembrance and the Honorable Double Cross

A premise worthy of Donald Westlake can't redeem this painfully amateurish debut about four retired U.S. counterintelligence agents, all veterans of the Cold War, all in their 70s, who band together with the daughter of a departed comrade after a suspicious death during a Memorial Day parade in Brooklyn. They soon discover that an old adversary is responsible--a KGB agent nicknamed the Schlange (the Snake)--and now he's coming after them. While ""counterintelligence veteran"" Savory may have a command of the facts, his writing is anything but controlled. Ostensibly narrated by septuagenarian Hawkins Shaw (sort of a geriatric Richard Marcinko), the point of view switches jarringly from first person to third person, and the tense jumps haphazardly from past to present. Plot development consists mainly of discussions and recaps rather than fleshed-out events, and the events that do occur range from the unintentionally comic (70-year-old men disguising themselves in grunge attire) to the tedious. The blink-and-you-miss-it climax caps a sophomoric effort. (Nov.)