Haywire a Novel of Suspense - Hardcover

Mills, James

3.37

94 ratings by Goodreads

9780446516198: Haywire a Novel of Suspense

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446516198 ISBN 13: 9780446516198

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 1995

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Former DEA agent Douglas Fleming is the envy of his friends. He has everything he thought he could ever want: a successful business, big home, two cars, beautiful wife, healthy son, a perfect life and marriage. Then suddenly, an inexplicable barrage of bizarre coincidences and accidents begins to shatter his marriage and his business. Facing financial ruin and frantic for money, Fleming falls back on contacts from his old DEA days.
Risking everything, Fleming decides to take off on a flight from Caracas to New York with his wife and nine-year-old son - who is carrying a toy lion stuffed with $100 million in bonds. But by the time the plane lands in New York, the boy has disappeared, and with him the $100 million.
The nightmare search for his son begins. Scouring the world, Fleming watches the drama broadcast live on CNN. He witnesses the televised lies of his best friend, the tearful pleas of his wife, sees himself vilified as a kidnapper, and becomes himself a fugitive. For a breakneck five days, Fleming races government agents and international criminals from New York to Washington, Bangkok, Zurich, and Chicago. And as he pursues his son, the boy, too, maneuvers perilously through a threatening world of violence and intrigue, awaiting the moment to reveal secrets of his own.

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About the Author:

JAMES MILLS is Director of the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, Glasgow, and ESRC Research Fellow/Senior Lecturer in History, University of Strathclyde, UK. His publications include "Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The 'native-only' lunatic asylums of British India, 1857-1900" (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2000) and "Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition 1800-1928" (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005). PATRICIA BARTON is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, UK. Her publications include "The Quacks and Adulterers: Colonial South Asia's Other Drug Problem," (Forthcoming 2008).

From Publishers Weekly:

Mills's (The Power) unsettling new novel paints with bold strokes a cynical portrait of global drug lords and the vast profits they generate under the noses or with the blessings of governments and police. Embittered former DEA agent Doug Fleming, cashiered for a too-vigorous battle against Peruvian drug barons, has settled his wife, Karen, and son, Charley, into a new home and has built a computer business poised on the brink of major success. Then his world goes haywire. Faced with desperate choices forced by a crumbling marriage, deep debt and the surprise loss of seemingly sure contracts, Doug jumps at the chance to get paid a half-million dollars for smuggling $100 million worth of bonds from Peru to New York for the client of a friend. The deal is locked in Lima when Doug is told that nine-year-old Charley must carry the bonds in a stuffed toy lion and fly back to the States as an unescorted minor on the same plane with his parents. Doug demands and takes his payment, but in Miami he and Karen are held by DEA agents and separated from their son. Landing at JFK, they learn that Charley has disappeared during a major shootout, prompting Doug to call a DEA buddy for help, only to find that the CIA knows about the bonds. Enraged, Doug chases Charley through airports around the world, always one step ahead of DEA, CIA and Peruvian agents. In this chilling polemical thriller, Mills (whose last nonfiction book, The Underground Empire, limned the worldwide drug trade) draws a chilling scenario of extensive efforts to pressure citizens into government scams where ethics fall prey to the specious goals of a handful of powerful, frustrated gamesmen enmeshed in what he calls the "political gimmick" known as the War on Drugs. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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