The Heat of Ramadan - Softcover

Hartov, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786754044 ISBN 13: 9780786754045

Publisher: West 26th Street Press, 2013

Synopsis

Israeli Military Intelligence agents Eytan Eckstein and Benni Baum set out with their team to eliminate master terrorist Amar Kamil in Germany. But tragically, Eckstein kills the wrong man, is badly wounded himself and put out to pasture. Then, in a brutal hunt across the globe, Kamil turns the tables, eliminating the team one-by-one as he heads for Jerusalem in a plot to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister. Eckstein is summoned back in from the cold, because only he can stop Kamil.

Steven Hartov was born in the United States and educated at Boston University. After serving in the U.S. Military Sealift Command, he emigrated to Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces parachute corps and Military Intelligence special operations. He is the author of the espionage trilogy, 'The Heat of Ramadan', 'The Nylon Hand of God', and 'The Devil&'s Shepherd' and co-author of the New York Times best seller 'In the Company of Heroes' and 'The Night Stalkers'. For six years, Hartov helmed 'Special Operations Report' as Editor-in-Chief. He currently serves as a Task Force commander in the New York Guard and is writing a new novel.

"Hartov makes a smashing debut with this well-crafted, provocative political thriller, written with an insider's accuracy."
- Publishers Weekly

"Steven Hartov knows and understands the world of international counter-terrorism, and he has used that knowledge to create a gripping, richly detailed, and impressive first novel. This is no techo-thriller concocted by some armchair generalissimo. This is the real stuff."

- Jonathan Kellerman, Author

"This skillfully plotted and richly textured narrative captures the human dimension as well as the technology and politics of covert operations."

- Library Journal

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

A Palestinian terrorist--escaping from a botched Israeli assassination attempt in Munich--is determined to top off his latest assignment by dispatching every member of the assassination team. The terrorist, Amar Kamil, has been spirited off to the Soviet Union, where his new masters treat him to a course of plastic surgery leaving him with the face of a top aide to the Israeli Prime Minster so that he'll be able to get close enough to the PM to kill him on the last day of the sacred month of Ramadan. But the Soviets, of course, are playing a deeper game: to have Kamil identified posthumously as a Syrian national whose guilt will focus Israeli retribution against a former Soviet client who can now be brought back to the fold. Kamil, however, who's not taken in by Soviet assurances of his survival, simply plans to go it on his own once he's landed at Ben Gurion-- stopping off along the way in London, Cyprus, and Cairo to avenge the death of the man who was killed in his place in Munich (a man whose identity first-novelist Hartov inexplicably saves as a toothless surprise) by liquidating the members of Eytan Eckstein's hit squad. Only Eckstein, deskbound from a leg wound, and his wily IDF paterfamilias Benni Baum see where this is all heading; always a step behind Kamil but two steps ahead of bureaucratic Col. Itzik Ben-Zion, they go outside Ben-Zion's channels, risking their necks to head off an assassination attempt that's sure to come at a swearing-in of new IDF recruits at Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. Photogenic locales and elegantly predictable plotting offset a tendency to overstage even little moments. Judicious skipping could turn this debut into a highly entertaining yarn. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

First novelist Hartov makes a smashing debut with this well-crafted, provocative political thriller written with an insider's accuracy. Near Munich, a team from Israeli Military Intelligence (AMAN) assassinates a Palestinian terrorist, then learns that it has killed the wrong man. After recovering from bullet wounds suffered during the botched operation, Eytan Eckstein, the team leader, returns to duty--and a kind of purgatory. Already guilty and frustrated, he is constantly ridiculed by the vain, ambitious leader of AMAN. In the meantime, the word among terrorists is that the intended target of the Munich mission, Amar Kamil (read Carlos or Abu Nidal), has been killed by rivals. When members of Eckstein's team, now scattered across the globe, are killed in seemingly freak accidents, however, Eckstein is convinced that Kamil is alive, although his boss won't hear of it. Hartov, an American who served in the Israeli parachute corps and intelligence agency (this book was vetted by an Israeli military censor), offers a complex, high-tension, consistently engrossing narrative. He has a convincing sense of place (his portrait of Jerusalem is especially evocative) and--in a departure from most fictional portrayals--his Palestinian characters are refreshingly human. 25,000 first printing; major ad/promo; BOMC selection; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: West 26th Street Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0786754044
• ISBN 13: 9780786754045
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 390