.com Edwin Kreiss is a former FBI agent whose discovery of a Chinese espionage ring made him a lot of enemies and resulted in his early retirement. Now his daughter is missing, and nobody, least of all a junior G-woman named Janet Carter, is going to keep him from finding her. Browbeating the one clue to her disappearance out of a terrified college student, Kreiss follows his daughter's trail to a deactivated federal arsenal in southwestern Virginia, where a fanatic whose son was immolated at Waco is cooking up a plan to blow the ATF to bits. Kreiss is uniquely qualified to play his role as hunter-in-chief. He's been trained as a "sweeper," a job title that refers to the cleanup of rogue agents and other enemies of the state, and he took a few high-tech search-and-destroy goodies with him when he was prematurely put out to pasture by his former employers. Now another sweeper wants to put him out of action, and Janet Carter's getting conflicting signals from her own superiors about just how much cooperation they're willing to give Kreiss as he sets out to rescue his daughter--and, incidentally, redeem his own troubled past. P.T. Deutermann is a skillful writer who knows how to tell a story. This briskly paced thriller almost turns the pages by itself. Carter, the ostensible heroine of the novel, never quite extinguishes her ambivalence about either Kreiss or the agency she serves, an attempt at multidimensionality of character that's more confusing than revealing. The ending hints at a continued relationship between them, but it's Kreiss, rather than Carter, who engages the reader's attention and whose future we really care about. --Jane AdamsFrom Publishers WeeklyPart action novel, part spy thriller, this explosive tour de force follows the adventures of aging superspy Edwin Kreiss, retired under a cloud, who sets Agency blood boiling when he steps out on his own to find his kidnapped college student daughter, Lynn, after the FBI stops looking. Rookie agent Janet Carter is informed of the spy's dark past, warned off when she digs for info, then ordered by creepy Agency and Justice drones with ulterior motives to keep tabs on Kreiss. Kreiss finds Lynn's cap near the Ramsey Arsenal, a dangerous mothballed toxic chemical complex in dense woods near Roanoke, and it's just a matter of time until he locates her captor, a fanatic who is making a bomb at the complex, intending to blow up ATF HQ in D.C. and avenge his son's death at Waco. Janet leads agents to the complex, but an explosion sends her to the hospital along with Lynn, who is pulled out of the rubble. The women flee the hospital, barely eluding Misty, a deadly female CIA assassin bent on grabbing Lynn in an attempt to settle an Agency score with Kreiss. The author exceeds his near-perfect Train Man with this ripped-from-the-headlines plot pitting a middle-aged Rambo with a small but deadly arsenal of spy gadgets against spine-chilling villains, corrupt Agency brass and powerful political forces. Deutermann never sounds a wrong note in this nonstop page-turner. (Mar. 19) Forecast: An excerpt from Hunting Season in the mass market edition of Train Man (St. Martin's, Mar.) will alert Deutermann's fans to the new book, while the novel's anti-government slant should satisfy their and other readers' seemingly insatiable appetite for tales of Washington corrupton. Expect vigorous sales; audio rights have been sold to Brilliance. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.From BooklistThe author is a retired navy captain who worked as an arms-control specialist for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In his seventh novel, he introduces Edwin Kreiss, a one-time intelligence-agency "sweeper" who specialized in getting rid of rotten apples in the organizational barrel. After his daughter disappears while camping, Kreiss launches his own investigation but soon finds his progress impeded by characters from his past and by a pretty FBI agent named Janet Carter, who's bent on wrapping up the case all by herself. It doesn't take too long for Kreiss to realize not only that his daughter is at serious risk but also that he's being hunted by another "sweeper," and that it's up to him and Carter to prevent a Washington, D.C., bomb attack. The tale is loaded with political and bureaucratic skulduggery, and there are plenty of well-banked curves and clever twists. A solid read from an author whose own tradecraft is every bit as good as that of his characters. Budd ArthurCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved how do i get an article in the new yorker Hunting Season
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Tedious. A clean miss by an author I like.By Roger J. BuffingtonI am a big fan of P.T. Deutermann and I know that he is capable of writing a page-turning novel with complex characters and fascinating insights into politics -- usually Navy politics. Here, I regret to report that Deutermann turns in a clean miss and this one was barely good enough to finish.The first problems are the characterizations. They are flat and one-dimensional. The protagonist is uninteresting and the reader really doesn't care about him. Special Agent Janet Carter shows a few signs of being a real person, but not much. The CIA "Sweeper" is literally robotic, and Deutermann describes her as such (really!).Worse, Deutermann gets bogged down repeatedly in "action detail." He will describe the protagonist's infiltration of a secret government site in gruesome detail, seemingly describing every creek, pothole, mudhole, stumble, and wet piece of ground. Deutermann does this over and over again and it is incredibly tedious. Who cares? Certainly not the reader. Three sentences would have sufficed for passages that Deutermann devotes a chapter to. This is, quite simply, bad writing.Deutermann is at his best when he writes about the Navy. These "Federal Agency" books are much less good. This one is a miss. RJB.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. AcceptableBy Bob HYNWould be about 3.5 stars; has a strong building sense of suspense, but it can get quite redundant and caught up in a repetitive suspenseful situation. I have tried two of his books--last through 100-150 pages, but then I realize I have 200+ pages to go of the same thing and quit. Still he knows how to create drama for a specific number of pages.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Predictable Plot Unrealistic Characters Silly Situations.By thirdtwinSounded like an interesting premise but poorly written and the plot completely predictable and the characters acted in ways that made no sense considering the training and experience they were supposed to have. A disappointment and a bore; try the first ten of twenty Spenser novels by Robert Parker instead. Or older Raymond Chandler. You'll enjoy it more.