The Cain Conversion »

The Manchurian Candidate meets the New World Order in this stunning thriller by the bestselling author of Crux and Flashpoint. Secret Service agent Bill Sullivan has a wife, two children, and a secret unknown even to himself: he is a multiple personality programmed and planted by the KGB during the Cold War.

The Russians no longer need an assassin in the White House, but someone has stolen the activation signal and is attempting to release the killing response called Cain.

Bill Sullivan fights to make sense of a world gone suddenly mad. Desperate to understand the meaning of his actions - and of his increasingly frequent blackouts - he races against time to solve the puzzle that is himself. The answers he finds could mean the salvation, or destruction, of his country, his family, his very life.

Publishers Weekly

The farfetched idea that multiple personality disorder benefits a spy in deep cover becomes as credible and entertaining as James Bond's armory of exotic weapons in this sizzling thriller from the skillful author of Redeye and Crux . Mischa Amenov formed multiple personalities to escape the sadistic abuse of his father, psychotic KGB killer Valery. When the Krushchev-ordered Sorin Project needed a spy with an unimpeachably American background as a mole in the Secret Service, Mischa was indoctrinated with the memories of Bill Sullivan, a Kansas native ``disappeared'' by the KGB. Amenov's own psyche was obliterated, and a trigger phrase was hypnotically implanted to release on command an assassin personality named Cain. ``Sullivan'' attends a U.S. college, marries and joins the Secret Service as planned, but the end of the Cold War makes the Sorin Project obsolete. Valery, dumped by the KGB and betrayed by his wife, heads for the States to trigger ``Cain'' before the Soviets can kill ``Sullivan'' and cover up the project's existence. This slick, harrowing tale--one might say that Aellen has sent Condon's Manchurian Candidate to DeMille's Charm School --climaxes with a brilliant showdown between father and son. ( Apr. )