About the Author:
A native Texan, Payne Harrison admits to having a "jaded past" as a newspaper reporter. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Texas A&M and an M.B.A. from SMU, and served as an officer with the U.S. Army in Europe. His journey to being a New York Times bestselling author started with his sending an excerpt of his book STORMING INTREPID to a New York publishing house, unsolicited and without an agent. That led to a multi-book publishing deal, an appearance on the TODAY show, hitting the Times list, and a paperback auction. He is the author of Storming Intrepid, Thunder of Erebus, Black Cipher, Forbidden Summit and EUROSTORM. He and his wife live in Dallas, Texas.
From Publishers Weekly:
With its evil-empire depiction of the Soviet Union and obsessive emphasis on the latest and best American military equipment, this first novel owes a heavy debt to Tom Clancy, but manages to carve out its own niche in the technothriller genre. In the author's version of the near-future, the lame duck American president (all but identified as Lee Iacocca) is using the revived space shuttle program to deploy the "Star Wars" defense system. Meanwhile, certain powers in Moscow, beset by Kremlin infighting and conspiracy, see their government's chance for military parity eroding and resort to a desperate measureplanting a psychotic Soviet-trained agent on the U.S. shuttle crew delivering the Star Wars payload. When the spy murders his fellow astronauts and radios Russia, NASA begins a race into space to destroy the shuttle before it reaches enemy hands. Harrison's prose is only serviceable and often much worse; he runs on for pages about a telescope or a bomber, but doesn't describe a major character beyond calling him "very big, very black and very, very smart." But his plotting is better, gathering speed as it goes and saving some effective surprises for the end. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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