ICARUS

Professor Michael French has come up with a Nobel-shoo-in formula for constructing Britain's first nuclear fusion reactor to extract the energy of the sun from seawater--much-needed energy now that the North Sea oil fields are about to go dry (it's the mid-1980s). But Project ICARUS is under the close scrutiny of British Intelligence's Science Service, which is being run by an evil spymaster who has been undermining French's research by having a British scientist falsify French's computer figures. In fact, if the reactor is built according to the false math, it will be a disaster when put into operation. Furthermore, the KGB wants French to defect, and is successfully tempting him with nude photographs of a teenage beauty from the Kirov ballet: French can leave his miserable marriage and have a Black Sea villa with dancer Kyra if he will give them the formula. Cupid's bolt magnetizes Kyra and French, but they are separated just as he sells out and then goes into hiding with ex-mercenary Crispin Bridge (from Way's first novel Dirty Tricks). Using a computer phig-in, French spends weeks stealing his own theory by telephone, and correcting it for sale to the Russians. Meanwhile, the British reactor is built and turned on the very day that Kyra and French rendezvous in Turkey. . . . Juicy nuclear tidbits, a neatly knotted love story, few clichÉs-- sturdy, witty suspense from a talented Britisher.