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A BROTHER TO DRAGONS by Kent Harrington

A BROTHER TO DRAGONS

by Kent Harrington

Pub Date: April 27th, 1993
ISBN: 1-55611-347-1
Publisher: Donald Fine

The FBI, the IRA, the Mafia, British Military Intelligence, NYPD, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary do considerable violence to each other on the streets of New York. It all has to do with jumbo jets and sabotaged landing systems. Mafia vengeance kicks off the international complications with the car-bomb murder of Erin DiGenero in Salt Lake City. Mrs. DiGenero had the bad fortune to be married to Frank DiGenero (The Gift of a Falcon, 1988), the FBI agent who went undercover for four years to expose a Mafia don. DiGenero, barely recovered from his own blast wounds, returns to FBI headquarters in D.C. to find out what the bureau is doing to find his wife's killers. Agent Benedetto, an old friend, is in charge of the investigation, but he doesn't appear to be trying hard to see that justice is served, so DiGenero takes matters into his own hands. The bomber, a Mafia goon, is quickly identified, but he's already dead, having been mysteriously executed over pasta. DiGenero digs up a confusing link between the goon and the IRA and finds it necessary to take up with the late bomber's boss's girlfriend, Jilian McCray, an Anglo-Irish beauty working undercover for the Northern Irish police. Jilian's nursing her own wounds: her fiancÇ was murdered by the IRA. She's in New York to see whether she can hit the IRA where it hurts. After quite a lot of rather dangerous misunderstandings, Jilian and DiGenero find that they make rather a good team and go to work to end the joint IRA/Mafia subversion of Kennedy International air traffic control that has already crashed one British Airway 747 into a Long Island shopping center. Okay, maybe the Sicilian-Irish connection is a stretch, but the tension is quite satisfactory, the romance is sexy, the scenery's gritty, and there are lots of appealing supporting roles, including a staunchly independent Jewish New York cop.