Frantic-paced thriller
Hostile Contact
By Gordon Kent. Harper Collins. 538pp. $29.95

Reviewer :: Reviewer: LS Rachel Irving

The first 35 pages of this book move from Pakistan, to a US aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, to the Unimak Canyon in the Alueutian Archipelago onboard a Chinese submarine, to Virginia then Washington, across to Beijing and over the Pacific. If that’s not enough, pretty soon you’re in Jakarta too.

Lost? I was and almost put the book down permanently. But I thought I’d give Gordon Kent another chapter to redeem himself and how happy I am for that decision as Hostile Contact turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read for some time.

Commander Alan Craik, a US Navy intelligence officer, is our lead character, taking us on a wild ride full of harrowing turns. He and NCIS agent Mike Dukas have just eliminated a double agent inside the CIA who played both sides with the US and the Chinese. His departure has left behind a deadly legacy of powerful enemies on both sides. Game on.

Hostile Contact is for those lovers of thriller spy books. With suicide boats heading for a US battle group, corrupt CIA agents and a Chinese double agent in Jakarta waiting for instructions, this is a book not for the faint-hearted.

Don’t let the confusion at the start put you off – which is just Kent’s way of setting the backdrop – as the book is very hard to put down.