The Paperbacker

Price: Rs 350

David Baldaccis Zero Day (Pan Macmillan,Rs 350) takes you into the remote parts of West Virginia. Baldacci,author of close to 30 books,abandons his older heroes and introduces Special Agent John Puller. Puller,from the US Armys CID,partners with Samantha Cole,the local homicide detective,to investigate the murder of a colonel and his family.

Puller,while being the rough and tough army man who sleeps with a gun under his pillow,is also an intellectual,fluent in French,German and Italian. In Cole,he finds a sass-spewing but kindhearted partner who tries to come to terms with the conspiracy afoot in her quiet town.

From the start,the colonels murder appears to be more than a random break-in,and points instead to a planned and filmed execution. As Puller and Cole try to get to the bottom of the case,the body count increases and the nature of the conspiracy darkens. Puller must tap into his army connections and draw strength from his father,a general now suffering from dementia,and his older brother,also an army officer but now serving a life sentence for treason.

As Puller digs deeper,he encounters terrorists and killers and the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust. The plot will keep you turning the pages,if you can survive the over-written lines and weak attempts at humour.