From Publishers Weekly
Deighton's novels Berlin Game , Mexico Set and London Match initiated the stories about British secret agent Bernard Samson, whose wife Fiona has defected to the U.S.S.R. As narrated by Samson, the three tales are intensely exciting, a quality that continued at high pitch in Spy Hook , the first volume in the new trilogy. This is the second, opening with Samson in Berlin, a fugitive from England where the intelligence service accused him of spying for the Soviets. With the CIA and KGB also menacing him, Samson is suddenly cleared of the charge of treason and returned to London and to warm welcomes from colleagues, his lover Gloria and his children. The situation changes, however, when he's sent on a "simple" mission to Vienna and a deep-cover meeting with Fiona. In the resulting events, the loyal agent's safety becomes even more tenuous than it was during his darkest days in Berlin. Maintaining unrelenting tension and chronicling an escalation of intrigue and violent death, the new thriller will make readers eager for the answers in the next. 200,000 first printing; BOMC selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Inside Flap
t Bernard Samson finds himself inexplicably hunted as a traitor, forced to abandon his life, his job, his position, and plunge into hiding in the most dangerous and darkest corner of Berlin. What is happening? What has he done? Nothing makes sense until Samson discovers that the Secret Service has known all along where he is. In fact, they have never taken him off the payroll. And now they are prepared to return his freedom and good name -- but there are strings attached, strings that begin to tighten around his neck even before his plane lands in Vienna . . .
From the Paperback edition.