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A Novel
by Noah Boyd
Ex-FBI Steve Vail is visiting Kate Bannon, the Assistant Director at the FBI, for what he thinks is a well-earned and romantic New Year's Eve in Washington, D.C., when he quickly finds himself knee-deep in a very complicated and unusual case.
A man known simply as Calculus, an intelligence officer at the Russian embassy, has approached the FBI claiming he has a list naming several Americans who are supplying confidential information to the Russian secret service. All he asks in exchange for the list is a quarter of a million dollars for each traitor the FBI nabs. But then Calculus informs the FBI that he's been suddenly recalled to Moscow, and the Bureau suspects the worst: the Russians are onto Calculus, probably have access to his list, and will be targeting the traitors soon unless the FBI can find them first.
The FBI knows they have to find Calculus and everyone on the list before the Russians do, but, without knowing exactly who is on the list, they also have to keep the operation quiet. Only one man can do the job: rogue, ex-agent Steve Vail. But finding Calculus and his list of turncoats isn't going to be easy. In fact, it's going to be downright deadly.
"In the course of a long and convoluted plot, Boyd, a former FBI agent, offers little about the inner workings of the agency or its investigative techniques." - Publishers Weekly
"Not as strong as The Bricklayer, but fans won’t want to give up on the series yet." - Booklist
"A three-ring carnival of counter-espionage, game-playing and summary justice whose many beautifully choreographed action sequences will make you forget how obvious its premise is, and how absurd its details" - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Agent X was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Noah Boyd is the pseudonym of former FBI agent, Paul Lindsay, who worked on cold cases when he was not writing. He was a Marine Corps platoon commander in Vietnam, where he was awarded two Purple Hearts and the Silver Star for Bravery. He went on to be a successful FBI agent in Detroit with over 20 years experience hunting some of the country's most prolific serial killers, including the Green River Killer and the Highland Park Strangler.
The first book in his Steve Vail series, The Bricklayer, was published in 2010. The second, Agent X (aka Last Chance to Die) was published in February 2011. Boyd's intimate knowledge of the Bureau's inner workings, including its weaknesses, and his "in the trenches" experience lends unusual authenticity to Vail's character and the novel’s ...
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