THE SEMONOV IMPULSE

Hero Joseph Budzinski, another Odd Man Out--a former member of Israel's now defunct hit squad for Nazi war criminals--finds that the infamous Joachim Schmidt, Butcher of Layerhausen, is alive and playing the fiddle in a Bulgarian chamber orchestra. Budzinski arranges an unofficial hijack of a Russian jet that is carrying the orchestra and Schmidt to Rome for a recording session he also arranged. The hijack flops spectacularly. Disowned by Israel, wanted by the KGB and police everywhere, the homeless killer kidnaps Katya Semonov, a world-famous Russian Olympic gymnast, and tries to trade her for Schmidt. Meldrum keeps his plot and dialogue on a lively move, and he plainly has a future in this genre.