"Action-packed, fast-paced, but very plausible international thriller"

The dirt bomb set in a busy market street on Pattaya Beach, Thailand killed over a hundred mostly local shopkeepers and Japanese tourists, but some were American and other nations' military. No one stepped forward to claim the act.

Just after the terrorist strike, two men calling themselves Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones meet with sea Captain Fang and maritime shipping expert Mr. Noortman. They hire the two maritime experts to deliver a special cargo to Alaska.

CIA satellite technology catches the notorious Fang and Noortman with the two men in Thailand. Concerned that they were involved with the Pattaya Beach terrorism, which may have been a test run for something greater, CIA Agent Hugh Rincon is assigned to investigate and stop any incident from reaching American shores. He quickly realizes that he might spend quality time with his wife, whom he has been with the equivalent of one year in the decade they have been married, because Sara Lange is the executive officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Sojourner Truth patrolling the Maritime Boundary Line in the northern Pacific Ocean. That is quality time trying to stop the plot of Smith and Jones targeting 240,000 civilians in Alaska.

Expanding from her wonderful Kate Shugak and Liam Campbell Alaskan mysteries, Dana Stabenow provides readers with an action-packed, fast-paced, but very plausible international thriller. The story line travels the globe until the climax off Alaska, which includes battling the nasty weather as much as a terrific sea and air maneuvers. Thriller fans will welcome Ms. Stabenow into the genre with this powerful tale that will be read in one enthralling sitting.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 15, 2005

Summary

In Thailand, two men hire some modern-day pirates to hijack a Russian freighter. It is appallingly easy and the ship sails, undetected, toward the western coast of North America. On the Bering Sea, the USS Sojourner Truth, a Coast Guard cutter, patrols the Maritime Boundary Line. The seasoned crew, dealing with a high volume of ocean- going traffic, is finding that choppy seas are making their efforts even more difficult.In Washington DC, a CIA analyst traces the sale of black market plutonium. As the pieces fit together, he realizes that a terrorist attack is under way on a valuable-and vulnerable-American target. He also sees that the Sojourner Truth is sailing right into the attack-putting his estranged wife, the second in command on the Sojourner, at the heart of an international crisis. Relentlessly gripping and frighteningly plausible, The Blindfold Game is the pinnacle of Dana Stabenow's award-winning career.