GENTKILL

Two more crackerjack cases for bad-boy FBI agent Mike Devlin (Witness to the Truth, 1992), whose insurance company probably worries more about his hidebound bosses than about the bomber or agent-killer he's up against. It's a toss-up as to who's more dangerous: the blackmailer who's holding up the Seacard Corporation by detonating a bomb in the Seacard Children's Hospital and threatening an encore unless he's paid $5 million; or the killer who lured FBI agent John Lawson into an abandoned glove factory and executed him with two shots in the face. What's not in doubt is that Malcolm Sudder, the special agent in charge of the Detroit office, will do everything he can to grab the glory and duck the workand that Devlin and his buddy Bill Shanahan will do everything they can to put a spoke in Sudder's wheel. Sudder is delighted when the death of the apparent blackmailer gives him a chance to bury Devlin, already assigned to penitentially meaningless service, even deeper in the detail of writing the extortion cleanup report. Meanwhile, Sudder sucks up to Seacard VP James Pendleton, who's dangling a six-figure security job in front of him. Sudder can't see what Devlin soon does: that Pendleton's anxious to close the books on the bomber because he skimmed a million dollars of the payoff himself. As Devlin and Shanahan lay plots and pranks against Sudder and his toadies, Lawson's killer moves on to a second FBI murder and plans a third. Will Devlin be able to piece together the pattern behind the killings before Sudder's impossible deadline for the extortion report succeeds in getting him booted off the Bureau? And just how stylishly will he ring down the curtain? Once again, Lindsay shows that he can do it allcat-and- mouse plotting, deliciously nasty Bureau byplay, sharp domestic vignettes, dozens of sparkling anecdoteswith as much panache as his beleaguered, irresistible hero. (First printing of 50,000; author tour)