Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event (Covert-One Series #7) » (Bargain)

When he died in March 2001, Robert Ludlum had become not only a veteran suspense author, but a reliable bestseller franchise. His plots involving high-level corruption and global conspiracy are like entering labyrinths; and readers keep coming back to get lost.

On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers discover the wreckage of a mysterious World War II-era aircraft, a discovery that forces the Russian Federation into a shocking admission. The unmarked plane is a Soviet strategic bomber that disappeared with its crew more than fifty years ago while carrying two metric tons of weaponized anthrax.

Desperate to prevent a political and diplomatic firestorm, the U.S. president dispatches a Covert-One team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith to the crash site. But others have reached the frigid, windswept island first, including an international arms dealer and his crew of vicious mercenaries. As for the Russians, they are lying: a second, even deadlier secret rests within the hulk of the lost bomber, a secret the Russians are willing to kill to protect. Trapped in a polar wilderness, Smith and his team find themselves fighting a savage war on two fronts-against an enemy they can see and another hiding within their own ranks.

Publishers Weekly

James H. Cobb is no Robert Ludlum. Although he wasn't a great prose stylist, Ludlum (who died in 2001) could keep a story engine churning like nobody's business. Compared to him, Cobb is a plodding, mechanical, cliché-ridden hired hand. And Jeff Woodman can't do much to make things more exciting-or even interesting-as he reads this tangled tale. Woodman has the vocal talents necessary to make the third-person narration work, and he does his best to create believable voices for the male and female members of a search team and their villainous adversaries-Russians, North Koreans and private mercenaries. But Cobb undercuts him at virtually every turn, the story moving like sticky syrup as a top secret Covert-One team of specialists hunt for a crashed WWII bomber and a deadly toxin that could destroy all life on the planet. Simultaneous release with the Grand Central paperback. (Sept.)