Black Sun » (Reprint)

James Twining graduated from Oxford University with a degree in French literature. His first Tom Kirk adventure, The Double Eagle, was published with great success on both sides of the Atlantic. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

It is a secret that has been hidden for more than a half century. . . . The clues have been scattered across the globe. Now someone has begun to piece them together--and the future of the world depends on his being stopped in time.

In Maryland, a vicious gang breaks into the National Cryptologic Museum and steals a Nazi Enigma machine. In a London hospital, an Auschwitz survivor is murdered in his bed, his killers making off with a macabre trophy--his severed left arm. In Prague, a seemingly worthless painting is stolen from a synagogue. Three cities. Three puzzling thefts. Could there possibly be a connection?

When former art thief Tom Kirk is first asked to investigate, the Prague theft certainly seems unremarkable enough--until the stolen painting turns up alongside the amputated human arm. As Tom digs deeper into the past, both items appear to be elements in an elaborate trail of clues laid down in the dying days of the Third Reich by a secret order of SS knights--clues that stretch from the remote mountains of Idaho to the snowy streets of St. Petersburg and ultimately lead to a fabled treasure lost in the ashes of war.

Spurred on by the sinister light of the Black Sun emblem, ghosts from his past, and the poisonous manipulations of a deadly enemy, Tom finds himself trapped in a situation where the greatest prize of all is life itself--and not just his own. . . .

Publishers Weekly

Those hoping for a more original plot than that found in Twining's first book, The Double Eagle, will be disappointed with this thriller again featuring Tom Kirk, a London-based ex-CIA agent and former professional art thief. Kirk is trying to go straight when he's recruited for a British MI6 operation to thwart a group of neo-Nazi extremists known as Kristall Blade. Tom wants no part of it until shown that his longtime enemy, Harry Renwick, is one of the conspirators. Soon Tom and partners Archie Connolly and the lovely Dominique de Lecourt are off on a Da Vinci Code-like treasure hunt complete with maps, codes, secret safety deposit boxes, car chases, gun fights and those favorite WWII staples, Eichmann's "gold train" and the lost Russian Amber Room. Veteran thriller readers, especially those who specialize in the Nazi subgenre, will find few surprises. Kirk, a muted, low-key character, spends far too much time brooding about his complicated backstory; the man could use a strong dose of caffeine and less shopworn material to break him out of his lethargy. (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.