Review (Reprint) – The Black Sun
Posted on January 26th, 2010
The Black Sun
By James Twining
HarperCollins
$24.95
ISBN 0-06-076214-4
Hardcover
Mystery Thriller
In London, a survivor of the Holocaust is murdered in his hospital room, and the murderers have amputated and stolen one of his arms. In Prague, an ordinary painting of apparently modest commercial value is stolen from a synagogue. In Fort Meade, Maryland, a relic of the Second World War’s espionage efforts—an Enigma Machine—is stolen from a museum’s cryptology exhibit.
What do these evidently unrelated and seemingly bizarre crimes have in common? That is the challenge that is about to be presented to Tom Kirk. As a former CIA agent—and also a former art thief—Kirk knows his way around the disparate and shadowy worlds of stolen art objects and espionage. With his former fence and criminal cohort, Archie Connolly, as his associate in his new and ostensibly legitimate enterprise—Kirk Duval Fine Art and Antiques—Kirk is recruited by London’s MI6. The British spy agency turns to Kirk because it needs his special abilities in its attempts to track down and neutralize the key players in Kristall Blade, an extremist neo-Nazi group believed to be responsible for the series of three bizarre crimes.
In a whirlwind adventure that takes readers to a bewildering array of international settings—London, America, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Austria—The Black Sun follows Kirk as he pursues the elusive Kristall Blade. However, along the way, Kirk will be challenged by his encounters with several of Kristall Blade’s most blood-thirsty leaders, an internationally respected Nazi expert, and Kirk’s old nemesis Harry Renwick.
As Kirk accumulates and puts together the different pieces of the Kristall Blade puzzle, he finds himself looking at something quite different from what he had expected: Each of the three crimes is connected to an incident that occurred during the closing moments of the Second World War—the mysterious disappearance of the infamous Hungarian Gold Train and its priceless cargo of gold, jewels, paintings, and artifacts.
However, the notorious train may now be the key to another, more urgently important secret, one more dangerous than Kirk and anyone in MI6 could have possibly imagined. Now Kirk will have to act quickly and decisively to prevent the sinister resumption of unspeakable horrors from the past.
The Black Sun is a novel overflowing with history—actual people, places, and artifacts—and author James Twining has energized his fictional rendering of history’s intrusion upon the present with a gripping narrative and compelling characters. Certainly the story has a dark edge to it; power-hungry, hate-filled ideologues from the past are intent upon unleashing unspeakable horrors on the world, and only Kirk’s over-the-top heroic determination and resilience can avert the disaster. The Black Sun, for all of its spy-versus-spy flamboyance and fantastic excesses, is nevertheless dominated by a nightmarish plausibility that will thrill and frighten readers.
Tags: Art Thief, Black Sun, British Spy, Cia Agent, Enigma Machine, Enterprise Kirk, Espionage Efforts, Fort Meade Maryland, Germany Switzerland, Hardcover Mystery, James Twining, Legitimate Enterprise, Mysterious Disappearance, Mystery Thriller, Neo Nazi Group, Second World War, Spy Agency, Survivor Of The Holocaust, Three Crimes, Whirlwind Adventure
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