Grandmaster

Yes. this is my second copy of Grandmaster..... this book hits a satisfying spot inside me. It's intense, a great combination of spy thriller and eastern mysticism. I can read it every 2 years or so, and love it every time. Too bad the new edition has such a cheesy cover compared to the original paperback issuance. It looks like a chess manual, which it certainly is not, although chess plays a serious part between the two main characters as they meet again and again throughout life. Get it!

They were born on the same day on different continents as Justin Gilead is an American and Alexander Zharkov is a Russian. They first meet at ten years of age over a chess game. However, that night Justin watches assassins kill his father in a seedy Paris bar. He is rescued from the same fate by monks from the highest mountains in Asia who were looking for him as they believe he is the latest reincarnation of Brahma. For the next decade and a half he lives and studies Buddhism under their tutelage. However Russian troops attack and burn down the remote monastery. Justin survives but is filled with rage and a need for vengeance against the Russians. He obtains work for the CIA enabling him to focus on his target Zarkhov, the chief of the Russian top secret espionage elite unit Nichevo. The life and death chess game between two masters will leave one as the GRANDMASTER and the other dead. Readers will quickly understand why this novel won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1985 though the Iron Curtain has since fallen, turning what was contemporary back then into historical especially the insight into the life and death of grandmaster chess as played by the Russian Bears. Justin moves the action-packed plot forward as his Buddhist trained skills enable him to accomplish seemingly impossible achievements; on the other hand Zarkhov is a vestige of the Soviet Union adding to the sense that this is a historical thriller. Fans will marvel at how newlyweds (at that time) Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran gifted their readers with a novel that remains tense and exciting though the perspective has changed. Harriet Klausner

I found this book for the first time in a box of family give away books. I read it and loved it. That was several years ago, and now I re-read it every time I run out of books to read. Warren and Cochran do a great job of relaying the eternal struggle of good and evil alongside the modern storyline of international spy-games. I didn't want to stop reading this book when I reached the last page. I was happy to find that Warren and Cochran wrote High Priest to follow where Grandmaster left off. Both of these books are quick reads that often times go too quick.

This book is utterly amazing! I found a pot of gold. JustinGilead is a young American chess prodigy. At ten, his father is killedbefore his eyes in the back of a dirty bar in Paris. Asian monks, fromthe mountain of Amne Xachim, rescue the young boy from a similar fate and raise him for the next 16 years as Pantanjali -- the reincarnation of the reincarnation of the god Brahma (yes, I wrote reincarnation twice). He learns how to control his heartrate at will, suspend his breathing when swimming under water, and stop all bodily functions for hours and days. When the monastery he lives in is burnt to the ground by Russian troups (ordered by the living goddess Varja) he goes on a quest to revenge the dead and kill "the prince of death" -- Zarkhov -- the head of the elite Russian, secret service that lead the attack. The prodigy returns to the world of chess, easily maintaining the rank of "master" (hence the title), while doubling as an agent for the CIA -- all in order to get closer to the man he is determined to kill.This book is fast paced, surreal, breathtaking in it's Asian mysticism set in the modern world. The intrigue is heavily applied and the style is uncluttered.