The Soviets have a "gun"--a beam weapon, brainchild of physical chemist Elena Pasvalys. An American plot to bring the inventors and their work together becomes urgent as Iraq readies nuclear-armed missiles at a Libyan base. This tale of double cross and derring-do turns on light-plane aerobatics, a hobby Gallagher and Pasvalys share. White's descriptions of aerobatics technique and technology soar; elsewhere the book is more predictable than convincing. Alternating tones of gung-ho fighter-pilot enthusiasm and cynical world-weariness in the style of John le Carre give a curiously schizophrenic quality to a novel further handicapped by a slow pace and implausible plot.

American boy technowhiz and stunt aviator meets Soviet girl technowhiz and stunt aviatrix, and they exchange political, technical, and physical intimacies while the world prepares to go to war. White also wrote The Flight from Winter's Shadow (1991). Saddam Hussein is amassing his forces on the Kuwait border but foolish American policies seem unaware. Funding for Wyn Gallagher's piece of Star Wars, an incredibly intelligent optical target acquisition device, dries up, and Wyn is left with nothing to do but practice his stunt flying--until he crashes his plane and can't even practice. Out of the blue comes a private sector offer to send him with a fat check to Moscow, where the Russians have begun to take orders for their hot new stunt plane, the best in the world. Wyn's only duty in exchange for the price of the plane is to slip an envelope to rival stunt artist and inventor Elena Pasvalys, who, he is told, is ready to defect. Dr. Pasvalys has invented a diamond coating that, when paired with Wyn's gun sight, would make it possible to shoot down missiles from space. And, as it happens, there is a missile about to go off. The Iraqis have hidden nuclear weapons in the Libyan desert, and they are dying to try them out. After Dr. Pasvalys and Wyn Gallagher have a cute-meet in a midair collision, Wyn finds that his case manager has been less than truthful: Dr. Pasvalys has no intentions of leaving the USSR. Alas for her, her case manager, an old-line Leninist KGB type, is as shifty as Gallagher's, and he has her pegged for a traitor. Confusions compound until the flyers are driven to flee everybody and sort things out for themselves. Not bad. Technoweenies can be romantic after all. -- Crown 0517578093 / 9780517578094
Hardcover Very Good Condition New York 

Price: 17.33 USD