From Publishers Weekly
First novelist Hartov makes a smashing debut with this well-crafted, provocative political thriller written with an insider's accuracy. Near Munich, a team from Israeli Military Intelligence (AMAN) assassinates a Palestinian terrorist, then learns that it has killed the wrong man. After recovering from bullet wounds suffered during the botched operation, Eytan Eckstein, the team leader, returns to duty--and a kind of purgatory. Already guilty and frustrated, he is constantly ridiculed by the vain, ambitious leader of AMAN. In the meantime, the word among terrorists is that the intended target of the Munich mission, Amar Kamil (read Carlos or Abu Nidal), has been killed by rivals. When members of Eckstein's team, now scattered across the globe, are killed in seemingly freak accidents, however, Eckstein is convinced that Kamil is alive, although his boss won't hear of it. Hartov, an American who served in the Israeli parachute corps and intelligence agency (this book was vetted by an Israeli military censor), offers a complex, high-tension, consistently engrossing narrative. He has a convincing sense of place (his portrait of Jerusalem is especially evocative) and--in a departure from most fictional portrayals--his Palestinian characters are refreshingly human. 25,000 first printing; major ad/promo; BOMC selection; author tour. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Stalking a Palestinian terrorist in Munich, an Israeli hit team bungles its mission and shoots the wrong man. Rescued by the KGB and given a new identity, the intended victim tries to eliminate his would-be killers and assassinate an important political figure. To avert disaster, a key Israeli operative must become a rogue agent and defy his own superiors. The skillfully plotted and richly textured narrative captures the human dimension as well as the technology and politics of covert operations. Despite a few purple passages and an occasional strained metaphor, this first novel compares favorably with the best in the genre. Admirers of Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett will definitely want it.- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., CookevilleCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A Palestinian terrorist--escaping from a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Munich--is determined to top off his latest assignment by dispatching every member of the assassination team. The terrorist, Amar Kamil, has been spirited off to the Soviet Union, where his new masters treat him to a course of plastic surgery leaving him with the face of a top aide to the Israeli Prime Minster so that he'll be able to get close enough to the PM to kill him on the last day of the sacred month of Ramadan. But the Soviets, of course, are playing a deeper game: to have Kamil identified posthumously as a Syrian national whose guilt will focus Israeli retribution against a former Soviet client who can now be brought back to the fold. Kamil, however, who's not taken in by Soviet assurances of his survival, simply plans to go it on his own once he's landed at Ben Gurion-- stopping off along the way in London, Cyprus, and Cairo to avenge the death of the man who was killed in his place in Munich (a man whose identity first-novelist Hartov inexplicably saves as a toothless surprise) by liquidating the members of Eytan Eckstein's hit squad. Only Eckstein, deskbound from a leg wound, and his wily IDF paterfamilias Benni Baum see where this is all heading; always a step behind Kamil but two steps ahead of bureaucratic Col. Itzik Ben-Zion, they go outside Ben-Zion's channels, risking their necks to head off an assassination attempt that's sure to come at a swearing-in of new IDF recruits at Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. Photogenic locales and elegantly predictable plotting offset a tendency to overstage even little moments. Judicious skipping could turn this debut into a highly entertaining yarn. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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