ONE-EYED KINGS

The senator from Maine who, with the former senator from Colorado Gary Hart, wrote the spy thriller The Double Man goes it alone now—and applies his formidable insider knowledge to a thriller featuring a senator-turned-spy and an Israel in grave danger. Sean Falcone of Massachusetts is the intrepid member of the Upper House who leaves the safety of the committee room to do some serious detection work when his boyhood chum and fellow intelligence-committee member Joshua Stock does a lurid death at the hands of a Middle Eastern temptress. Falcone wants to clear Stock's name, but he also wants to find out why Stock was dipping into—and possibly leaking—CIA secrets about moles in Mossad. Stock was a passionate supporter of Israel, but his meddling did only harm to that country. Falcone, a lonely and ascetic widower and Vietnam hero, starts his search in high places. He is very much aware that the President and his number-one crony, who heads the FBI, are not Israel's most ardent supporters. Falcone's detective work is both eased and complicated by the involvement of a Woodsteinish super-reporter from The Washington Post. His long-dormant romantic sensibilities are piqued by the involvement of a stunningly beautiful Israeli assassin with a wig that Falcone may have seen in the videotape of his friend's murder. Everything revolves around the ambitions of those ultra-reliable friends of the spy plotter, the reactionary element in the Politburo, who in this case plan to stir up the Arab world with a spectacular bit of religious vandalism. Satisfactory spy thriller.