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THE PEACEKEEPERS by Ben Bova

THE PEACEKEEPERS

by Ben Bova

Pub Date: Aug. 23rd, 1988
Publisher: Tor

Unusually restrained, starry-eyed near-future disarmament yarn from the normally hawkish veteran editor-writer. Almost single-handedly, giant Supreme Court Justice Red Eagle persuades the UN to adopt a global peace-keeping role: the nuclear super-powers warily agree to disarm, so their orbiting fortresses and hardware come under the control of the International Peacekeeping Force. Naturally, the new order has its dissenters, and soon military veteran Jonathan Hazard, aboard an orbiting Peacekeeper fortress, has to hold off a bunch of would-be conquerors (the bad guys, who number Hazard's son among their ranks, try to blackmail Hazard when all else fails). In a separate but related development, Cole Alexander builds a mercenary army to go in pursuit of super-terrorist Jabal Shamar, who has appropriated the last half-dozen nuclear weapons on the globe. Soon, Alexander's daughter Kelly teams up with Hazard's rehabilitated son Jonathan Jr. to frustrate another attempted coup, this time on the Moon. And, eventually, Alexander, Kelly, Jonathan Jr. and assorted friends will track Shamar to his lair among the Andean drug barons, the upshot being that most of our heroes are killed, Shamar perishes, and the nukes explode the coca crop into a radioactive desert. Episodic, improbable, well-paced entertainment, with a credo that's much more constructive and pleasing than Bova's usual Red Menace hysteria: his best outing for some time.