DAY OF WRATH

Former naval military analyst and intelligence officer Bond, ex-collaborator with Tom Clancy (on Red Storm Rising) and now a spectacularly large-selling, spankingly reviewed technothriller author himself (The Enemy Within, 1996, etc.), slaps scenes into his computer like fresh magazine clips. This time out, he pits the bold archvillain Prince Ibrahim al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and perhaps the world’s richest man, certainly its most dangerous, against US Army Colonel Peter Thorn and FBI Special Agent Helen Gray, who must stop the bankrolling billionaire’s delivery of Russian devices onto American soil. But on a countdown to apocalypse, they find themselves being hunted. Will the Day of Wrath detonate? And how does Bond’s plotting hold up? Well, you know, it’s your typical fifth novel’s divinely inspired terrorists—and they’re not waving sparklers.