To Catch a Fox

Rating:
Summary: Review of "To Catch A Fox"
Review: "To catch a fox . . . one must be a fox" - an old Russian saying!

This work, Ted Colby's second venture into the world of fiction, plays from his first, excellent fictional work, "THE KILYAIKIN FILE".

It's a pager-turner, similar to the ones that Tom Clancy produces, yet different, since Clancy's style has multiple sub-plots running simultaneously, which can make tracking them a bit difficult, while Colby's protagonist Jack Dieter - an Annapolis grad. - (Colby provides a redeeming feature via the fact that Dieter has a 'brother' who is a product of West Point) - travels from one tough situation - plays a part in the planned assassination of Saddam Hussein - to another, capture or neutralize Osama bin Laden - smoothly, as in a day-to-day narrative.

The setting for the planned high-tech assassination (a homing chip for cruise missiles substituted for current state-of-the-art ID chips for side arms) of Saddam Hussein is based upon the presumption that Hussein was instrumental in the death of Dieter's wife - a contract operative for the CIA - and playing off Dieter's natural desire for revenge, for vengeance.

The setting for the capture or 'neutralization' - he never really dies in the book - of Osama bin Laden, is the surfacing of a conspiracy involving Hussein and bin Laden.

Throughout the book runs a third plot, not a subplot - just below the surface, involving a less than honest CIA administrator, a person who could have stopped, yet permitted the midair destruction of a transatlantic flight resulting in the demise of hundreds of innocent passengers, who succeeds in manipulating Dieter and his wife, separately, convinces Dieter that his wife was killed on that flight, targeted by Hussein - in order to accomplish his own agenda, then attempts to set Dieter up for his own death, conveniently covering his 'disappearance' into a life of luxury in Latin America, under an assumed name, with the benefit of CIA 'funds'.

In the process, Colby manages to relate an accurate and simplified narrative of the history of the armed conflict in Chechnya. Concomitant with all of this is an excellent portrayal of the fractured Russian Security services, (FSB, MVD, etc.) as a result of the dissolution of what used to be the Soviet Union to include their divided loyalties and various political machinations.

It is an excellent read, highly recommended.

The reviewer, Thomas W. Leo, CPP, is a 1959 graduate of West Point, a classmate of the author.