Skydancer: Superma

Despite several problems I ended up really liking this book, and I expect to read more by Geoffrey Archer. The story centers around a British scientist who is the chief designer of a new kind of cluster warhead for the submarine-launched Polaris missiles deployed by the British Navy. The Russians are out to steal this "secret" so they can design a defense against this new weapon. The story ranges from high-level political decision-making to the nitty-gritty of spy craft. What makes the book especially good is that the plot has several unexpected twists and that the characters seem like real people with real weaknesses. There are plenty of "bad guys" and "mediocre guys", but no real heroes. There is also a lot of (presumably authentic) information about submarine warfare (shades of "The Hunt for Red October") and how spies entrap their victims. A highlight is an exciting description of a meeting between the British scientist and his Russian opposite number at the Berlin wall. (The story takes place just before the end of the cold war.) My biggest criticism is that the kernel of the plot (the scientific "secret" and the attempted deception to hide this secret) isn't viable. However, this is a typical failing of international thrillers involving a struggle over some scientific gizmo, so you have to take the plot with a grain of salt and pretend that it works. My second criticism is that this book starts very slowly, and the characters seem cliché-like at first. In fact, when I was a third of the way into the book I was considering dropping it! I'm glad I continued reading. Finally, I found the moral conflict between the British scientist and his wife to be too strong to be realistic. If the wife really thought her husband, because of his job, was practically a mass murderer, wouldn't she have left him long ago? Despite this list of negatives the book really appealed to me after I got past the slow beginning. Rennie Petersen