RULES OF BETRAYAL
Christopher Reich
Doubleday
Thriller
ISBN: 9780385531542
Christopher Reich had written a number of solid stand-alone works that earned him the title “the John Grisham of Wall Street” by the New York Times before he turned his hand to series writing and international espionage. His Ransom characters, introduced in RULES OF DECEPTION, have been fascinating from their inception. Jonathan Ransom is a selfless physician who has worked with an organization known as Doctors Without Borders, foregoing the monetary compensation he could have received in a private medical practice for a spiritual one. His wife, Emma, had assisted him in this endeavor, yet she was not who she seemed to be. Rather, she was (and is) a spy and assassin named Lara Antonova, who used Jonathan’s medical practice as a cover for her own activities. Her betrayal of Jonathan and the effect it has had upon both of them, and their relationship, has been played out over the course of two novels, revealing new and unexpected sides of their personalities.
Jonathan, good works notwithstanding, has a dark side to him, one that he attempts to simultaneously submerge and atone for, sometimes succeeding, oftentimes failing. Emma/Lara, for all of her deception, truly loves Jonathan. And though she has used her considerable sensuality on him (and others) with a sinister twist, the depth of her feeling for him cannot be denied, even when she risks everything to reveal it, as shown near the conclusion of RULES OF VENGEANCE, the second book in the series.
While sequels of great books are often disappointing, Reich has been on an upward trajectory since the introduction of the Ransoms into the world of fiction, and this arc continues with RULES OF BETRAYAL. The novel begins along three paths that start converging early on. A top-secret weapon, lost nearly three decades ago in the mountains of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, becomes the object of a deadly race involving two of the world’s superpowers and one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Meanwhile, Jonathan is doing personal penance for past actions and is on his own in a Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan, performing medical miracles under circumstances where his skill and bravery are tested to the utmost. When he is abducted while in the middle of a pediatric reconstructive surgery to treat a patient who is far less worthy of his talents and compassion, it sets a series of wheels in motion that won’t resolve themselves until close to the end of the story. And Emma is caught in the crosshairs as a clandestine mission she is on goes horribly wrong due to her betrayal by someone in the Division, the U.S. intelligence agency for which she ostensibly works.
Frank Connor, the head of the Division, is aware of Jonathan’s darker abilities; after Jonathan is extracted from dire circumstances in a daring, hair’s-breadth rescue, Connor recruits Jonathan to rescue Emma and recover the lost weapon. Jonathan’s adversaries in this pursuit are Lord Balfour, a violent and sadistic arms dealer who is partly responsible for Emma’s predicament (while using her for his own ends), and an Islamist known as The Hawk, whose hatred of western civilization is equaled, if not surpassed, only by his hatred of Jonathan. And then, of course, there is Emma, whose own mysterious agenda is a wild card in the entire proceedings. Jonathan has heart but is a relatively raw recruit. He receives a crash course in spy craft courtesy of what may or may not be the Mossad, but will it be enough?
Reich ends RULES OF BETRAYAL with a number of intriguing balls in the air while nonetheless providing a resolution to the main plot. Thus the novel, as with its predecessors, is complete in itself while leaving the reader in anticipation of the next volume in the series. If Reich and his Rules books are not on your “A” list of must reads, they should be.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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