From Publishers Weekly
Whitcomb (Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team) parlays the experiences and expertise of a 15-year career with the FBI into a cutting-edge counterterrorism thriller. Imaginative plotting, rock-solid prose, fascinating technology and blasts of furious action will hold readers hostage until the last surprising pages. Whitcomb deftly shuffles a quartet of intriguing characters—Jeremy Waller, a member of the elite, top-secret FBI hostage rescue team; Sen. Elizabeth Beechum, chair of the Senate intelligence committee; Jordan Mitchell, the cold, brilliant CEO of Borders Atlantic, the world's largest telecommunications company; and beautiful Sirad Malneaux, an executive in the Borders Atlantic Atlanta office—who, except for Mitchell, soon face extraordinary danger. Jeremy must kill or be killed in Yemen; Senator Beechum is attacked in her home and later charged with murdering her attacker; and Sirad has a secret agenda that pits her against her employers. Only Mitchell, the puppet master, remains in control. His new Borders Atlantic super cell phone boasts "a totally secure, low-cost encryption system that would allow virtually any subscriber to communicate without fear of interception," which, of course, makes it a perfect tool for terrorists. Eventually, the four related stories meld into one, and on the final pages jaws will drop as readers find that everything they thought they knew about the story was wrong. This is a stellar thriller from an exciting new voice. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
FBI special agent Jeremy Waller finds himself plunged into the Black, the agency term for an off-the-books mission with no backup. His job is to get to the bottom of the most explosive scandal in American political history. Elizabeth Beechum, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the upcoming presidential elections and the chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is accused of murdering a National Security Council attorney. The key issue surrounding her case is her opposition to a new, encrypted cell-phone technology that is virtually impossible to tap. Since 80 percent of U.S. intelligence is gathered via intercepted communication, the new technology could be devastating to national security. Is Beechum being framed, and if so, by whom and why? Whitcomb, a former FBI agent and author of the nonfiction best-seller Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team (2001), uses his insider knowledge of the bureau and the Beltway to create a compelling context--character assassination taken to the next level--for a political thriller. Entertaining election-year reading. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Black FROM THE PUBLISHER
"For those chosen to fight terrorism at its source, secrecy is the only imperative - a rule Special Agent Jeremy Waller is about to find out the hard way." "Selected for the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team, Agent Waller gives up a life he thought he understood to dive headlong into a violent world of trapdoor truths and shifting alliances where the greatest threat may be his own sense of right and wrong." "He is not alone. Sirad Malneaux - a beautiful executive at one of the world's top telecommunications companies - turns out to be more adept at murder than marketing. Her true role as a CIA nonofficial cover operative will turn a simple assignment into a secret Waller can never divulge." "Jordan Mitchell, CEO of Borders Atlantic and one of the world's richest men, threatens to trade national security for market share by selling a new encryption technology to the Saudis. His shameless love of money is surpassed by just one other passion - a passion only Jeremy is capable of discovering." "Senator Elizabeth Beechum, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and front-running presidential candidate, vows to stop Mitchell at any cost. Unfortunately, even her security clearances and insider status cannot protect her from being charged with an unspeakable crime." Racing from the FBI's secret training rooms to Arabian deserts, from the halls of Congress to the back rooms of Wall Street, and told with a voice only an insider like Christopher Whitcomb could summon, Black lifts the curtain on a world of secret operations, corporate manipulation, and classified technology. It is a world where everything you thought you knew about justice comes to an end - a world where Agent Waller discovers that sometimes the only way to get out of the darkness is to head even deeper into the shadows.
FROM THE CRITICS
James Parker - The New York Times
… in its account of the zone where webs of technology, finance and intrigue intertwine to create a huge, hidden sensorium, Black offers as exotic and lyrically paranoid a worldview as any Don DeLillo fan could wish for.
Publishers Weekly
Whitcomb (Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team) parlays the experiences and expertise of a 15-year career with the FBI into a cutting-edge counterterrorism thriller. Imaginative plotting, rock-solid prose, fascinating technology and blasts of furious action will hold readers hostage until the last surprising pages. Whitcomb deftly shuffles a quartet of intriguing characters Jeremy Waller, a member of the elite, top-secret FBI hostage rescue team; Sen. Elizabeth Beechum, chair of the Senate intelligence committee; Jordan Mitchell, the cold, brilliant CEO of Borders Atlantic, the world's largest telecommunications company; and beautiful Sirad Malneaux, an executive in the Borders Atlantic Atlanta office who, except for Mitchell, soon face extraordinary danger. Jeremy must kill or be killed in Yemen; Senator Beechum is attacked in her home and later charged with murdering her attacker; and Sirad has a secret agenda that pits her against her employers. Only Mitchell, the puppet master, remains in control. His new Borders Atlantic super cell phone boasts "a totally secure, low-cost encryption system that would allow virtually any subscriber to communicate without fear of interception," which, of course, makes it a perfect tool for terrorists. Eventually, the four related stories meld into one, and on the final pages jaws will drop as readers find that everything they thought they knew about the story was wrong. This is a stellar thriller from an exciting new voice. Agent, Suzanne Gluck. (June 2) Forecast: A strong publisher push should alert thriller readers that Whitcomb, a recipient of the FBI's Medal of Bravery, is the real deal a writer who's lived his story and tells it exceptionally well. Look for big numbers if word gets out. Author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
FBI agent Jeremy Waller's latest assignment takes him into the world of black ops-cases that demolish the rules. Trust former agent Whitcomb to know his stuff. With a six-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A neatly constructed debut, with all the black op trimmings-and a neurotic amount of brand-naming-by Whitcomb (Cold Zero, 2001), who's been in the belly of this beast as a member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. "A little-known Saudi fundamentalist cell to attack or disrupt the Federal Reserve" fuels the tale. But the Saudis are only accessories to the manipulations of Jordan Mitchell, the big kahuna of an international telecommunications company that appears to be selling the US government down the global-terrorist tube. Whitcomb keeps readers off balance, though, detailing with comfortable ease the activities of the secret FBI company that's intended to neutralize national security threats. There's a certain cool, a believe-this quality, to the godawful proceedings, as if you may not wish to know about "the world out there you aren't supposed to see." The cold fact is that there's a lot of nasty by-product killing-of children, for instance-in this war against fundamentalists, and the operatives often don't know what's being thrown at them. Whitcomb's charged narrative has lots of sharp imagery ("The spinning rotors ignited flint in the soil, creating a bizarre nimbus of red, yellow, and orange hues,") but also a surfeit of Simon Pearce glass, Kaj Gottlob library tables, John Lobb shoes, Charvet oxfords, and Catherine Malandrino blouses. There's also a measure of rote junk ("How will something so small help our fighters carry the jihad?" mewls a fundamentalist) but also plenty of good babble, like "direct-feed imagery intercepted from a National Reconnaissance Office KH-11 spy satellite as it relayed encrypted intelligence through one of the Borders Atlantic's geosynchronouscommunications birds."A thriller debut that's driven by veracity-too much of it at times: Savile Row! Ferragamo! Hugo Boss!-tethered to a fraught reality that may well be happening right now.
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