THE DANUBE RUNS RED

Set mainly in present-day Vienna, this far from advanced spy thriller relates the adventures of an American gun runner or ""weapons broker"" named John Allison who finds himself in the middle of a scheme to revive the Hungarian revolution. In cahoots with the CIA and with the tacit approval of the State Department, Allison has been getting rich selling guns to certain selected regimes around the world. Now a shipment of rifles heading for India is intercepted by unknown parties in Vienna and Allison undertakes to recover them. He enlists the help of his Hungarian comrades who were ""freedom fighters"" in 1956 only to be double-crossed in their renewed efforts to draw the U.S. into a confrontation between Russia and Hungary. After some predictable escapes from death Allison triumphs and the status remains quo. The plot is well worked out and the action is fast so it's probably expecting too much to ask for a more sympathetic and believable central character as well. The dialogue gets a little tacky however: ""Somehow he was going to get himself and Sylvia out of this. But it was not going to be easy.