Blown » (Reprint)

Francine Mathews spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, where she trained in operations and worked briefly on the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. A former journalist, she lives and writes in Colorado, where she is at work on her next thriller, The Alibi Club.

Former CIA analyst Francine Mathews has created "one of the toughest female secret agents we've seen in a long time."* Using her firsthand expertise of international espionage, Mathews offers another brilliantly realized suspense novel so intense, so authentic, it lethally blurs the line between fact and fiction. In Blown, Caroline Carmichael returns in a white-hot tale of terror on the streets of Washington, where one woman must gamble her life to save her country. As thousands of runners line up for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., no one suspects that in a matter of hours the event will become a race between life and death. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael is about to tender her resignation, when the first reports of a terrorist attack pour in–and she instantly recognizes the hand of an enemy she's battled for years: the 30 April Organization. The neo-Nazi group is alive and well and operating in the United States, assassinating top officials and abducting a vuln...

Publishers Weekly

Picking up where Mathews's action-packed spy thriller The Cutout (2001) left off, brassy, resilient CIA intelligence analyst Catherine Carmichael sifts through the shrapnel after her clash in Europe with a faction of neo-Nazi killers called 30 April (Hitler's death date). Deadly 30 April operative Daniel Becker, "a Tim McVeigh in the making," begins his stateside killing spree by distributing ricin-laced water to D.C. marathoners. As hundreds die, Becker then shoots the CIA director and sets his sights on Catherine, who not long ago discovered that her spy husband, Eric, previously thought dead, is alive. But he's in Berlin, his identity has been exposed and high-ranking CIA officials ("enemies with the faces of friends") have labeled him a 30 April terrorist. With her planned resignation stalled, Catherine focuses on getting Eric out of Germany, chasing Becker and dodging the advances of CIA legal eagle Tom Shephard, whom she'd enticed romantically after Eric was pronounced MIA. A child abduction and more calculated assassination attempts keep Catherine on the run. Mathews, a former CIA intelligence analyst, dexterously serves up strong suspense and crisp espionage maneuvers. With Caroline Carmichael at the wheel, it's a riveting, wild ride right to the nail-biting conclusion. Agent, Rafe Sagalyn. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.