Shattered Bone by Chris Stewart
Posted on | August 25, 2008 | No Comments
I did several variations for this cover, which do you think the art director chose.
Synopsis
A blazing technothriller of a first novel.
Publishers Weekly
We learned from a recent John Travolta movie that “broken arrow” is the military code for a stolen nuclear missile. Now we discover, in this sputtering first thriller by U.S. Air Force Major Stewart, that “shattered bone” is code for “the theft, hijacking or unauthorized flight of a B1-B bomber loaded with nuclear weapons.” Stewart (who set world time, distance and speed records for B-1s in 1995) writes about flying with grace and power, but his prose stalls when it comes to character and plot. Battling the imperialist plans of a new Russian premier, Ukrainian leaders deploy one of their deepest moles, 29-year-old U.S. Air Force Captain Richard Ammon. The secret agent disappears after an apparent mid-air explosion, then resurfaces in Ukraine, where he is recruited to steal a B1-B and use it to destroy Russia’s still-active missile sites. Feeling some (justified) distrust of Ammon, the Ukrainians take his American wife hostage soon Ammon finds himself fighting to save her from her captors and the U.S. from nuclear war. A more sophisticated, experienced writer might have pulled off such a doozy of a setup; regrettably, despite wonderful airborne action scenes, Stewart’s albatross of a narrative loses all its strength as soon as it touches the ground. (Oct.)
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