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THE CHOCOLATE SPY by David Alexander

THE CHOCOLATE SPY

By

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 1978
Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

FBI versus computerized Soviet spies--as special agent Frank Merriman investigates the explosion-burning of a Nevada town where the Defense Department was experimenting on formulas for a new plutonium-less H-bomb. The sticking point: somehow the Enemy defied maximum security and stole all the data from the plant before they demolished it and its scientists. So Frank's trail--littered with the usual murdered informers, suspicions colleagues and bedmates, sabotaged planes, and demanding superiors--leads to the National Science Labs, which have been supplying top-flight computer parts to the Biological Science Research Division, which is working on a project code-named CHOCOLATE. Could the project be a Soviet front? And could it have developed a humanoid computer that can do anything, tap any data storage bank, any phone system? All too true, with globs of technologese to squirm through if you want to keep up with city-hopping, incognito Frank--who, despite stray references to excessive weight and age, is a fairly faceless hero-narrator. The chocolate verdict: edible but lumpy.