Thrillers, Police Stories

Midas

Name: Midas
Author: Russell Andrews
ISBN: 9780446617321

by Russell Andrews

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Overview

- The author's previous hardcover, Aphrodite (Mysterious Press, 1/04, 0-89296-784-6), received rave reviews. The Warner mass market edition (3/05) will tie in with MIDAS. Both novels feature Andrews's terrific new hero, Long Island cop Justin Westwood. - Russell Andrews is also the author of Icarus (Doubleday, 2001) and the national bestseller Gideon (Ballantine, 1999). The two thrillers have more than 455,000 hardcover and paperback copies in print combined. - Russell Andrews is a pseudonym for Peter Gethers, author of the bestselling nonfiction trilogy The Cat Who Went to Paris (Random House, 1991), A Cat Abroad (Crown, 1993), and The Cat Who'll Live Forever (Broadway Books, 2001).

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

This well-written "post-9/11" thriller from Andrews (the pseudonym of New York City book editor Peter Gethers) starts off with two seemingly innocuous news items: an EPA announcement that places an Alaskan oil field "permanently off-limits to oil companies" and a Bloomberg report on oil prices. But then the novel explodes with a nightmarish event: a suicide bombing destroys a restaurant in one of Long Island's fashionable beach towns, killing (among others) East End Harbor sheriff Jimmy Leggett. Leggett's widow wants the new sheriff, Justin Westwood (the protagonist of 2003's Aphrodite), to find out who's behind her husband's murder. Soon another incident-a small plane crashes just after take-off-commands Westwood's immediate attention; the dead pilot has no ID and, bizarrely, leaves no fingerprints. Westwood's relentlessly dogged investigation pits him against some powerful characters indeed-Islamic terrorists or our own government?-and puts him in real danger: the book's best section vividly describes what it might be like to be interrogated at Guant namo Bay. While some readers may be put off by the broad caricature of the current administration and a conspiracy-laden plot that perhaps only Michael Moore and his acolytes could find credible, all will cheer the appealing Westwood as he pursues the truth. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Mar. 22) FYI: Gethers is also the author of The Cat Who Went to Paris and other works of nonfiction. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Russell Andrews

Russell Andrews is the pseudonym for Peter Gethers, who has written several works of nonfiction. He is a Vice-President Editor-at-Large for Random House Inc. and the head of the newly launched Random House Films. He has edited and published, among many others, Jimmy Carter, Caroline Kennedy, William Diehl, Carl Hiaasen, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Joe Klein, Robert Hughes, and Kitty Kelley. An accomplished screen and television writer, Andrews has incredible media connections and is a phenomenal promoter.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Terrorists, yes-ruthless, violent, frightening-but whose terrorists?A devastating explosion destroys Harper's, a popular restaurant in East End Harbor, the small town bordering the niftier part of New York's storied Hamptons. Gone in a nanosecond is the lunchtime crowd, including Sheriff Jimmy Leggett. It's this horrific fact that propels Jay Westwood into a promotion he certainly never sought and is tempted to refuse. But only briefly. Jay, as readers familiar with the series (Aphrodite, 2004, etc.) well know, is a man born to do hard jobs. Almost at once Sheriff Westwood begins to worry about the possible connection between the crash of a small plane at East End Airport and the suicide bombing at Harper's. A tenuous connection, true enough-the bombing says terrorism; the crash says accident-still, something about it niggles. As Westwood tracks alone along this avenue, he wonders more than once if he really knows what he's doing. ("He decided, as usual, that he didn't, but he was damn sure going to go ahead and do it anyway.") When suicide bombers level two more restaurants, attention quite naturally focuses overseas. By now, however, Jay has turned up a most mysterious name: Midas, linked to a most formidable coterie of movers and shakers. What is Midas? No one seems prepared to answer this knotty and dangerous question, since those asking it tend to meet untimely ends. Jay sees and understands this lethal cause and effect, but being the kind of cat he is, curiosity is endemic. Suddenly the matter is taken out of his hands, and Jay discovers what it means to be on the wrong end of something called the Triumph of Freedom Act. Overly convoluted, as seems inevitable in an Andrews thriller,but readers who hang in will be vastly entertained. And maybe a bit unnerved.