Tom Gabbay's debut novel, a Cold War thriller revolving around John F. Kennedy's historic visit to Berlin in 1963, is nothing short of an espionage masterwork -- comparable to the very best from heavyweights like John le Carre, Ken Follett, and Robert Ludlum. . Jack Teller is a former CIA operative who quit the Company after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Living a relatively quiet life in South Florida, Teller finds his peaceful retirement interrupted when his former mentor and boss, Sam Clay, contacts him with some extraordinary news. Just days before JFK's scheduled speech near the Berlin Wall, the Berlin station of the CIA receives a message from a high-ranking officer in the East German secret police with critically important information that he will only reveal to Teller. When the former CIA op arrives in Berlin and eventually meets with the elusive contact -- a colonel in the infamous Ministry for State Security -- he is confronted with extremely unsettling intelligence: a plot to assassinate JFK in Berlin that has originated from within the United States government. With no one he can trust and with the future of humankind at stake, Teller must somehow find a way to stop the assassination attempt . Replete with enough subterfuge, deceit, treachery, subversion, and betrayal to satisfy even the most discriminating aficionado of spy novels, Gabbay's debut -- a superbly plotted and wildly provocative tour de force -- will have fans of political thrillers and conspiracy theorists alike blissfully engrossed until the very last page and well beyond. Paul Goat Allen
