... "What if someone nuked your favorite playground?" ...
Roy Hayes's new novel is a roguish follow-on to his critically acclaimed thriller, The Hungarian Game. Although it brings back Hungarian's cynical protagonist--Charles Remly--and a few other major characters from Remly's American espionage service, the story takes place in 2004, after Remly and his fellow intelligence operatives have been forcibly "retired" because of their candor: They have confronted the powers inside the Beltway with the fact that Saddam had neither NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons nor any connection with the 11 September attack or with the terrorists who orchestrated it.
Following a blundered assassination attempt as he sleeps, Remly tracks down the source of the attack and learns that the man behind it has targeted Las Vegas for the next major terrorist event in America--this one a nuclear meltdown. And when confronted with the possibility that their former service is closely allied with the schemers behind the plot to nuke Vegas, Remly and his ragtag team of discarded spooks--some middle-aged, others quite elderly and not at all able-bodied--take on the well-financed and fiendishly organized crew of plotters.
With The Last Days of Las Vegas, Roy Hayes has surpassed his earlier work. An unpredictable thriller, this exciting new novel is filled with surprises and seasoned with sardonic observations. And, pleasing to relate, it is an adventure populated by characters so vivid they seem to step out of the story to make themselves at home in your memory.
Yet The Last Days of Las Vegas is nonetheless a thriller, with a tantalizing plot that keeps you turning the pages as you're pulled deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of deceit and manipulation, of murders of expedience and the cynical realities of politics and espionage.
In Europe a powerful military exile from Iraq pulls the strings of an international conspiracy that will return him as Iraq's new dictator. Fueled with billions of dollars from Saddam's looted fortune, the tentacles of his plot reach from his war-torn homeland to the glittery streets of Las Vegas, and much of the world in between.
In the Arctic Circle a former Soviet intelligence operative recruits a nuclear technician.
In Kuwait a suicide pilot skims his explosives-laden plane low over the desert toward a 5-star luxury hotel.
In Santa Barbara a discarded espionage czar schemes to reenter the great game, while making an end run around America's traditional intell community.
In a breakaway rogue nation an arms merchant sells RPGs, surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank charges, plastique explosives, and thousands of AK-47s to a shadowy Russian facilitator, for shipment to Iraq ... and Las Vegas.
In Washington D.C. senators, members of the house, lobbyists, and intelligence operatives cut deals to return the exiled Iraqi general to Baghdad as his nation's new strongman.
In London a billionaire Russian on the run from Moscow deludes himself that he is untouchable in his heavily-armored Bentley.
In the Ukraine two thick lead containers of lethal, highly-enriched nuclear materials are loaded onto an international flight, destined for Nevada.
And ... in Las Vegas a bungled assassination attempt propels a burned-out American intelligence operative into action. His name is Charles Remly--or perhaps it is not--and he reluctantly shoulders the assignment to keep Las Vegas from becoming a radioactive ghost town.
With its spreading overcast of tension and suspense, its sudden flashes of violence, its imaginative ploys and gambits, and its complex, subtly revealed, breathtaking plot, The Last Days of Las Vegas is a summer "beach-read" thriller you'll want take home ... to enjoy again in the chill of winter.
Roy Hayes's new novel is a roguish follow-on to his critically acclaimed thriller, The Hungarian Game. Although it brings back Hungarian's cynical protagonist--Charles Remly--and a few other major characters from Remly's American espionage service, the story takes place in 2004, after Remly and his fellow intelligence operatives have been forcibly "retired" because of their candor: They have confronted the powers inside the Beltway with the fact that Saddam had neither NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons nor any connection with the 11 September attack or with the terrorists who orchestrated it.
Following a blundered assassination attempt as he sleeps, Remly tracks down the source of the attack and learns that the man behind it has targeted Las Vegas for the next major terrorist event in America--this one a nuclear meltdown. And when confronted with the possibility that their former service is closely allied with the schemers behind the plot to nuke Vegas, Remly and his ragtag team of discarded spooks--some middle-aged, others quite elderly and not at all able-bodied--take on the well-financed and fiendishly organized crew of plotters.
With The Last Days of Las Vegas, Roy Hayes has surpassed his earlier work. An unpredictable thriller, this exciting new novel is filled with surprises and seasoned with sardonic observations. And, pleasing to relate, it is an adventure populated by characters so vivid they seem to step out of the story to make themselves at home in your memory.
Yet The Last Days of Las Vegas is nonetheless a thriller, with a tantalizing plot that keeps you turning the pages as you're pulled deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of deceit and manipulation, of murders of expedience and the cynical realities of politics and espionage.
In Europe a powerful military exile from Iraq pulls the strings of an international conspiracy that will return him as Iraq's new dictator. Fueled with billions of dollars from Saddam's looted fortune, the tentacles of his plot reach from his war-torn homeland to the glittery streets of Las Vegas, and much of the world in between.
In the Arctic Circle a former Soviet intelligence operative recruits a nuclear technician.
In Kuwait a suicide pilot skims his explosives-laden plane low over the desert toward a 5-star luxury hotel.
In Santa Barbara a discarded espionage czar schemes to reenter the great game, while making an end run around America's traditional intell community.
In a breakaway rogue nation an arms merchant sells RPGs, surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank charges, plastique explosives, and thousands of AK-47s to a shadowy Russian facilitator, for shipment to Iraq ... and Las Vegas.
In Washington D.C. senators, members of the house, lobbyists, and intelligence operatives cut deals to return the exiled Iraqi general to Baghdad as his nation's new strongman.
In London a billionaire Russian on the run from Moscow deludes himself that he is untouchable in his heavily-armored Bentley.
In the Ukraine two thick lead containers of lethal, highly-enriched nuclear materials are loaded onto an international flight, destined for Nevada.
And ... in Las Vegas a bungled assassination attempt propels a burned-out American intelligence operative into action. His name is Charles Remly--or perhaps it is not--and he reluctantly shoulders the assignment to keep Las Vegas from becoming a radioactive ghost town.
With its spreading overcast of tension and suspense, its sudden flashes of violence, its imaginative ploys and gambits, and its complex, subtly revealed, breathtaking plot, The Last Days of Las Vegas is a summer "beach-read" thriller you'll want take home ... to enjoy again in the chill of winter.
Used availability for Roy Hayes's The Last Days of Las Vegas