When U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Panache intercepts a yacht in the Caribbean Sea, the crew discovers two men cleaning up the vessel after murdering a man and his family. Through a mock execution, the Coast Guardsmen force the killers to confess to the crime. It is later learned that the murdered man was involved in a money laundering scheme for a drug cartel. Upon hearing of this atrocity, the President of the United States, who is running for re-election, feels compelled to take drastic measures against drug trafficking; his challenger, J. Robert Fowler, has rallied the public behind the administration''s failures in the War on Drugs. The president initiates covert operations within Colombia and a step-up of operations against aircraft believed to be distributing narcotics. Aiding the president are U.S. National Security Advisor James Cutter, Central Intelligence Agency''s Deputy Director of Operations Robert Ritter, and Director of Central Intelligence Arthur Moore. The plan consists of four operations: *Operation CAPER is the interception of mobile phone communications between cartel management. It is also the communications arm for SHOWBOAT and the light-fighters'' only means of contact with the outside world. John Clark is dispatched with CAPER to coordinate the effort. *Operation EAGLE EYE uses F-15 Eagles to intercept drug flights. Several aircraft are destroyed and others are forced to land, where the pilots are interrogated for information regarding the cartel. *Operation SHOWBOAT involves four teams of soldiers infiltrating Colombia to stake-out airstrips used by drug-trafficking aircraft. They report departure times of aircraft, allowing the EAGLE EYE team to intercept them. Later the troops attack the airstrips and coca processing sites. The soldiers are seconded from U.S. light infantry battalions, and are all Hispanic in order to blend in with the local population. *Operation RECIPROCITY involves using ground-attack aircraft and laser-guided bombs to attack cartel locations discovered by intercepts. The bombs have a casing that will be consumed in the blast to give the impression of a car-bomb. Meanwhile, Félix Cortez, a former intelligence officer from Cuba employed by the cartel, feigns romantic interest in the aide of Emil Jacobs, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The aide unknowingly reveals information regarding the date of Jacobs'' official visit to the Attorney General of Colombia. Cortez delivers this information to the cartel, which orders Jacobs'' assassination as retaliation for the U.S. seizure of cartel money. During his visit, Jacobs and several other Americans in his delegation are killed. Jack Ryan suspects the CIA''s involvement in the situation in Colombia. As acting Deputy Director of the Intelligence Directorate, Ryan should be privy to most operations but he realizes he is being put out of the loop. After Robby Jackson, assigned to the Pentagon, makes an inquiry into activity in the region, Ryan goes to Moore to demand an explanation. Moore is evasive, yet orders Ryan to withhold information about Colombia from a congressional oversight committee. Cortez eventually uncovers the U.S. operations. He suppresses this information, planning to engineer a war within the cartel that will leave him in a position to seize power. Cortez orders mercenaries to hunt down the U.S. troops, and blackmails Cutter into ending SHOWBOAT, promising the intra-cartel war will slow drug imports to the States. Cutter''s meeting with Cortez is shadowed by Ryan and Clark. Clark is outraged at Cutter''s abandonment of the troops and, with Ryan, plans a rescue operation with personnel from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Air Force. Clark makes radio contact with two of the SHOWBOAT teams, ordering them to alternate pickup points to await extraction. The other two teams encounter mercenaries and take casualties. Clark makes radio contact with some survivors of these remaining teams&mdash;which include Domingo Chavez&mdash;then flies into Colombia to retrieve them. Ryan uses an Air Force helicopter to pick up other survivors. Together, Clark and Ryan launch a raid on the cartel''s command post, capturing Cortez and extracting the remaining ground team. Due to a hurricane and damage to the helicopter, they land on the deck of the Panache. Cortez is returned to Cuba, where he is a marked as a traitor. Upon being confronted by Clark with evidence of his treason, Cutter commits suicide. Ryan confronts the defiant president, informing him that despite his classifying the drug cartel as a "clear and present danger," Ryan must brief U.S. Congress over the illegal operations. After Ryan briefs the committee, the president deliberately loses the election in order to hide the covert operations and protect the honor of those involved. Ryan realizes that the president has more honor and dignity than he originally thought.

Clear and Present Danger

Marko Alexandrovich Ramius, a Lithuanian submarine commander in the Soviet Navy, intends to defect to the United States with his officers on board the experimental nuclear submarine Red October, a Typhoon-class vessel equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system, described as an arrangement of pump-jets nicknamed the "Caterpillar Drive." The system makes sonar detection extremely difficult. The result, immediately apparent to Jack Ryan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a strategic weapon platform that is capable of sneaking its way into American waters and launching nuclear missiles with little or no warning. The strategic value of Red October was not lost upon Ramius. Several other factors have spurred his decision to defect, in particular his disillusionment by the death of his wife, Natalia, at the hands of an incompetent doctor who went unpunished because he was the son of a Politburo member. Her untimely death, combined with Ramius'' long-standing dissatisfaction with the callousness of Soviet rule and his fear of the Red Octobers destabilizing effect on world affairs, ultimately exhausts his tolerance for the failings of the Soviet system. Ramius kills the Red Octobers political officer to ensure that he will not interfere with the defection, and writes a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, Natalia''s uncle, brazenly stating his intention to defect. The Soviet Northern Fleet sails out to sink the Red October under the pretext of a search and rescue mission. Meanwhile, Ryan, a high-level Central Intelligence Agency analyst, flies from London to Langley, Virginia, to deliver British Intelligence''s photographs of Red October to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Ryan consults a friend at the U.S. Naval Academy and finds out that the new construction variations house the Caterpillar Drive. When the Red Octobers silent drive is engaged, she disappears off the sonar of the USS Dallas, a Los Angeles class submarine that is tracking her. Putting this information together with the subsequent launch of the entire Northern Fleet, Ryan deduces Ramius'' plans. The U.S. military command reluctantly agrees, while planning for contingencies in case the Soviet Fleet has intentions other than those stated. As tensions rise between the U.S. and Soviet fleets, the crew of the Dallas discover a way to detect Red October. Ryan must contact Ramius to prevent the loss of the submarine and her decisive technology. Through a combination of circumstances, Ryan becomes responsible for shepherding Ramius and his vessel away from the pursuing Soviet fleet. In order to convince the Soviets that the Red October has been destroyed, the U.S. Navy rescues her crew after Ramius fakes a shipboard emergency. Ramius and his officers heroically stay behind, claiming they are about to scuttle the submarine to prevent it getting into the hands of the Americans. A decommissioned U.S. ballistic missile submarine, the USS Ethan Allen, is blown up underwater as a deception ploy. A depth gauge taken from the main instrument panel of the Red October (with the appropriate serial number) is made to appear as if it was salvaged from the wreckage. These events succeed in convincing Soviet observers that the Red October has been lost. However, GRU intelligence officer Viktor Loginov, masquerading as the Red Octobers cook, realizes what is happening. Loginov attempts to ignite a missile rocket motor inside a launch tube so as to destroy the Red October, wounding both Ramius and a British agent while killing one of Ramius'' top officers. Ryan attempts to persuade the fiercely patriotic Loginov to surrender rather than die in the explosion, but he refuses. He manages to fatally shoot Loginov in the submarine''s missile compartment. Ramius orders the missile jettisoned in case Loginov had managed to arm it, an action which adds to the deception of the Soviets. Captain Viktor Tupolev, a former student of Ramius'' and commander of a Soviet Alfa-class attack submarine, has been trailing what he initially believes is an vessel. Based on acoustical signature information, Tupolev and his political officer realize that it is the Red October, and proceed to pursue and engage it. The two U.S. submarines escorting the Red October are unable to fire due to rules of engagement, and the Red October is damaged by a torpedo from the Alfa. After a tense standoff, the Red October rams Tupolev''s submarine broadside and sinks it. The Americans escort Red October safely into the eight-ten dry dock in Norfolk, Virginia, where Ramius and his crew are taken to a CIA safehouse to begin their Americanization. Ryan is commended by his superiors and flies back to his posting in London.

The Hunt for Red October

CIA analyst Jack Ryan attends a diplomatic conference in Moscow as part of an American delegation to the Soviet Union. He learns that the CIA’s most highly-placed agent, codenamed "CARDINAL", is none other than Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, the personal aide to the Soviet Minister of Defense and a national war hero. Filitov was recruited by GRU colonel and British agent Oleg Penkovskiy, and offered his services to the CIA after the deaths of his wife and two sons; the latter two were killed during their service in the Red Army. As a result, Filitov has been passing political, technical, and military intelligence to the CIA for the past thirty years. The U.S. discovers through "National Technical Means" that the Soviets were working on an ABM defense system based at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Emilio Ortiz, a CIA liaison, is sent to aid Mujaheddin rebels in the region. One rebel leader, a man known only as "The Archer," is questioned after unwittingly witnessing a test of the Soviets'' ABM system. The Archer determines that the Soviet installation is a threat to him and his people, and tasks his group with attacking and pillaging the facility. In the end, the guerrillas destroy a large amount of Soviet equipment. However, the rebels suffer horrendous losses, including the death of The Archer. Ryan travels to New Mexico to meet with a young SDI researcher, Major Alan Gregory, whom he brings to Washington, D.C., to brief the president. Gregory lives with another scientist, Candi Long, who is working on adaptive optics for use in the development of laser weaponry. A lesbian KGB agent, Bea Taussig&mdash;who has unluckily fallen in love with Long&mdash;describes Gregory and his work to her KGB handler, Tanya Bisyarina. The KGB launches a plan to kidnap and debrief Gregory. Filitov is arrested after his work for the CIA is discovered. However, Ryan concocts a plan to both secure the return of Filitov and arrange the defection of the sitting KGB chairman, Nikolay Borissovich Gerasimov. Gerasimov is angling to take over as General Secretary in the wake of Filitov''s arrest, something Ryan is determined to prevent because of his unyielding anti-American ideology. Ryan schemes to go public with the prior capture of Soviet submarine Red October, banking on the political instability of the Soviet Politburo. He plans for Filitov and Gerasimov to be exfiltrated on the American delegation''s aircraft, while Gerasimov''s family is extracted from Estonia by John Clark onto the submarine USS Dallas. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, three KGB officers kidnap Gregory on Gerasimov''s orders and hold him in a shabby desert safe house, planning to send him to Moscow for debriefing. Their plans are foiled when the FBI sends in the Hostage Rescue Team to retrieve Gregory and return him to Long. Among those killed is Bisyarina. Ryan informs Gerasimov of the failed operation, forcing the enraged chairman to accept Ryan''s defection offer. The flipped Gerasimov fetches Filitov from his confinement. The three make their way to Sheremetyevo Airport, awaiting the departure of the American delegation. Unfortunately, two KGB officers, Klementi Vladimirovich Vatutin and Sergey Nikolayevch Golovko, become aware of their planned departure. As Gerasimov and Filitov escape, Ryan allows himself to be captured by Golovko, banking on his diplomatic status to protect him from harm. Golovko then escorts Ryan to the private dacha of General Secretary Narmonov, where the two men discuss the CIA''s interest in his political position and the CIA''s interference in their internal security. Ryan returns to the United States, where he and several others attend the funeral of Filitov, who had died of heart disease in the months following his CIA debriefing period. Filitov is buried at Camp David, within twenty miles of the Antietam battlefield. A Soviet military attaché attending the funeral questions why Filitov would be buried so close to American soldiers. Ryan, always working to keep the peace, explains to him, "One way or another, we all fight for what we believe in. Doesn''t that give us some common ground?"

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

In a near-future, a British neuroscientist named Professor Burgess Phelan has discovered a portion of the brain, the VMN, that is typically twice the size in men as it is in women. In certain men, however (approximately 1 in 100,000), it is the same size as a woman''s, and that abnormality is an exceptionally accurate indicator of violent sociopathy. Professor Phelan developed an imaging device called L.O.M.B.R.O.S.O. (Localisation of Modullar Brain Resonations Obliging Social Orthopraxy) used to help diagnose men with the VMN deficiency. In the interests of public safety, the Lombroso institute is set up to test all the men in Britain. Males are enticed with ad campaigns to submit for testing; those who are VMN-negative are given confidential treatment, including counselling and drugs, and assigned a code name out of the Penguin book of Great Thinkers (e.g., Shakespeare, Plato, etc.). The police aren''t given the names of the VMN-negative, but they are allowed to confirm whether or not a particular person is in the Lombroso Institutes system as VMN-negative. "Wittgenstein" is the code name of a VMN-negative who, until he was made aware of his status, was living a well-adjusted, if solitary, life, venting his sociopathic tendencies harmlessly through virtual reality entertainment systems. Upon discovering his pathology, though, he undertakes a public service of his own: after hacking into the Lombroso Institute''s systems and obtaining a list of all VMN-negative men in Britain, he undertakes to kill them all. The narrative unfolds from a dual perspective: Wittgenstein''s, and the female police lieutenant, Isadora "Jake" Jakowicz, assigned to catch him. Wittgenstein''s portion is told from the first person as a diary of his assassinations and subsequent downfall; the detective''s portion is told in a more traditional third-person perspective. In the novel''s setting, the national government was elected partly on a platform of "retributive justice", rather than rehabilitative, and punitive coma has replaced the death penalty (and, to a lesser extent, incarceration) as punishment for extreme crimes. In its favour, punitive coma is safely reversed, should someone later prove innocent; as well, prison costs have plunged since the inmates are sentenced to years of sleep rather than restraint, and require much less guarding and care. Opponents of punitive coma (of whom Jake is one) argue that the state is now stealing years from people''s lives, and giving the guilty no opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; thus, punitive coma is inhumane. This position is defeated, however, by proponents who observe that any long-term space travel will necessarily involve long-term medically-induced comas of the same kind, so the process itself is not inhumane; furthermore, criminals are not subject to the dangerous criminal environment of prison, so punitive coma may be considered a more, rather than less, humane punishment. An interesting portion of the narrative involves the use of a Cambridge philosophy professor to engage Wittgenstein in a debate on the morality of his actions. Since the killer comes to see his whole act through the lens of the real Wittgenstein''s philosophy (including his mid-career reversal following Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), it''s hoped that he will be amenable to philosophical persuasion. However, as Wittgenstein''s killings continue, the government presses the Cambridge don to talk Wittgenstein into committing suicide, a position with which the philosopher agrees, much to Jake''s dismay. gl:A Philosophical Investigation

A Philosophical Investigation

Battle Royale takes place in 1997 in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of a totalitarian state known as the . Under the guise of a "study trip", a group of students from in the fictional town of Shiroiwa, in Kagawa Prefecture, are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on Okishima, an isolated, evacuated island southwest of Shodoshima (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program. Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organized insurgency impossible. The first Program was held in 1947. Fifty third-year junior high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members of their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner and receiving a government funded pension. Their movements are tracked by metal collars, which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape the Program, or enter declared forbidden zones (which are randomly selected at the hours of 12 and 6, both a.m. and p.m.), a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If no one dies within any 24-hour period, all collars will be detonated simultaneously and there will be no winner. After being briefed about the Program, the students are issued survival packs that include a map, compass, food and water, and a random weapon or other item, which may be anything from a gun to a paper fan. During the briefing, two students (Fumiyo Fujiyoshi and Yoshitoki Kuninobu) anger the supervisor, Kinpatsu Sakamochi, who kills both. As the students are released onto the island, they each react differently to their predicament; beautiful delinquent Mitsuko Souma murders those who stand in her way using deception, Hiroki Sugimura attempts to find his best friend and his secret love, Kazuo Kiriyama attempts to win the game by any means necessary (stemming from his lack of ability to feel human emotion due to a partial lobotomy caused by a car crash while in utero) and Shinji Mimura makes an attempt to escape with his best friend, class clown Yutaka Seto. In the end, four students remain: protagonist Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa (the crush of Shuya''s best friend), Shogo Kawada—a survivor of a previous instance of the Program—and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. Following a car chase and shoot-out between Kazuo and the main characters, Noriko kills Kazuo by shooting him, but to absolve the quiet and naturally good-natured Noriko of any guilt, Shogo then shoots Kazuo, claims he is in fact responsible for Kazuo''s death, and then takes his two partners to a hill. After telling Shuya and Noriko that he will kill them, Shogo shoots in the air twice, faking their deaths for the microphones planted on the collars. He then dismantles the collars using information he had previously hacked into the government servers to obtain. Shogo boards the winner''s ship, as do Shuya and Noriko, covertly, a short while later. On the ship, Shogo kills Sakamochi and a soldier, while Shuya kills the other soldiers on board. Shogo tells Shuya how to escape, succumbs to his wound from the battle with Kiriyama and dies. The two remaining students return to the mainland and attempt to travel to find a clinic belonging to a friend of Shogo''s father. From there, they make plans to escape to the U.S., facing an uncertain future as they run from the authorities who have spotted them as they try to board a train.

Battle Royale

Central Intelligence Agency operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez join Special Air Service (SAS) officer Alistair Stanley in forming an elite multinational counter-terrorist unit known as Rainbow, based in Hereford, England. The unit consists of a highly effective and cohesive pair of operational squads, supplemented by intelligence and technological experts from the SAS. Clark is the commanding officer, while Chavez leads one of the two squads. Not long after the establishment of Rainbow, a bank in Bern, Switzerland, becomes the site of a hostage situation, eventually determined to be led by wanted terrorist Ernst Model. In an early and desperate show of resolve, the terrorists kill one of the hostages, leading the Swiss government to seek help from Rainbow. Chavez''s Team-2 is deployed to the scene and, disguised as policemen, is able to successfully breach the bank and kill the terrorists with no further loss of civilian lives. Several weeks later, Chavez is deployed to Austria, where a group of left-wing German terrorists have taken over the schloss of a wealthy Austrian businessman, Erwin Ostermann, in order to obtain imaginary "special access codes" to the international trading markets. Through careful planning and negotiating, the terrorists are persuaded to take their hostages out to a waiting helicopter, presumably to make their getaway. On their way to the helicopter, Rainbow''s disguised shooters ambush and kill them. Soon afterward, even more terrorists take over a Spanish theme park, demanding the release of Carlos the Jackal in exchange for the thirty-five children they have taken hostage. Due to the size and scope of the operation, Rainbow deploys both of its squads. During the stand-off, Rainbow is unable to prevent the terrorists'' execution of a terminally ill Dutch girl. The squads manage to eliminate the terrorists without further loss of innocent life. Clark and his colleagues become suspicious about this flurry of activity from older terrorists. Unbeknownst to them, radical eco-terrorists from a biotechnology firm called the Horizon Corporation have orchestrated the previous attacks, having hired ex-KGB officer Dimitriy Popov to foment the incidents. The increase in terror attacks helps their security firm land a contract during the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. From within the Olympic security apparatus, they plan to launch a sophisticated bioweapon attack intended to wipe out the majority of the human race. Upon learning about Rainbow, Popov directs members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to take over a local hospital in Hereford near Rainbow''s base, take Clark and Chavez''s wives hostage, and ambush one of Rainbow''s squads. Rainbow and the SAS retake the hospital, capturing some of the terrorists. Interrogation reveals Popov''s involvement in instigating the attack. Now the focus of a manhunt, Popov is kept hidden at Horizon''s secret base in Kansas. Upon learning about the planned Olympic attack, an appalled Popov escapes the compound and contacts Clark. Fortunately, Chavez is present at the Olympics as a security consultant and manages to thwart the attack. Their plans destroyed, the eco-terrorists retreat to their refuge deep in the Brazilian rain forest, hoping to negotiate a deal to return to the United States. Clark, knowing that they may never be put on trial, tracks down the Brazilian hideout and deploys Rainbow to the location. After Rainbow defeats the eco-terrorists'' militia force and destroys their facility and supplies, Clark has the survivors stripped naked and left to die, taunting them to "reconnect with nature." For his critical assistance, Popov is not charged for his role in the attacks. The Horizon Corporation continues as a legitimate pharmaceutical corporation, without their CEO and the other employees involved in the never-revealed plot.

Rainbow Six

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small, sealed package which he had entrusted to Langdon years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, he learns that the invitation he received was not from Solomon, but from Solomon''s kidnapper, Mal''akh, who has left Solomon''s severed right hand in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in a recreation of the Hand of Mysteries. Mal''akh then contacts Langdon, charging him with finding both the Mason''s Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed. Langdon is then met by Trent Anderson, head of the Capitol police, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA''s Office of Security. Examining Solomon''s hand, they discover a clue leading them to a Solomon''s Masonic altar in a room in the Capitol''s sub-basement, where they find a small pyramid lacking a capstone, with an inscription carved into it. Sato then confronts Langdon with the security x-ray taken of his bag when he entered the Capitol, which reveals a smaller pyramid in the package Langdon brought in response to the request by the kidnapper posing as Solomon. Because the package had been sealed for years, Langdon was unaware of its contents, but Sato, dissatisfied with this, attempts to take Langdon into custody. Before she can arrest him, however, she and Anderson are assaulted by Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, who then flees with Langdon during the melee. Mal''akh is a Freemason with tattoos covering almost his entire body. He infiltrated the organization in order to obtain an ancient source of power, which he believes Langdon can unlock for him in return for Peter Solomon''s life. As Langdon deals with the events into which he has been thrust, Mal''akh destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter''s younger sister, where she has conducted experiments in Noetic Science. Mal''akh is also being pursued by Sato in the interests of National Security. Mal''akh captures Langdon and seriously injures Katherine Solomon. He places Langdon in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid, from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid''s base for Mal''akh, who then flees with Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite''s House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine are eventually rescued by Sato and her staff who race to the House of the Temple where Mal''akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals. Mal''akh, who turns out to be Peter''s long-believed dead son, Zachary Solomon, forces the Word—the circumpunct—out of his father and tattoos it on his head on the last portion of unmarked skin on his body. Mal''akh then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to become a demonic spirit and lead the forces of evil. Director Sato, however, arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple''s overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Mal''akh. The CIA then thwart Mal''akh''s plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels using an EMP blast, disabling a cell tower in the network path leading from Mal''akh''s laptop computer. Peter informs Langdon that the circumpunct Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument and tells him that the Word—a common Christian Bible, the "Word of God"—lies in the Monument''s cornerstone, buried in the ground beneath the Monument''s staircase. Langdon realizes that the symbols on the pyramid''s base spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God. These words are inscribed upon the small aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid. Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by mankind, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing man''s natural God-like qualities—similar to Katherine''s Noetic research—and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovery will usher in a new era of human enlightenment.

The Lost Symbol

Professor William Race is a young linguist, working for NYU. One day, he is approached by a retired Col. Frank Nash, a physicist from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to translate a manuscript written in ancient Latin. Initially, Race is reluctant because Nash only describes what is required from him on the most vaguest terms and does not appear to be interested in the alternatives Race gives him. Race is relectant to join even when he hears that his brother, Marty, was the one who suggested his name. What clinches it, is that when Nash mentions the names of the civilians who are going to be on the trip, one of the names turns out to be Race''s college sweetheart, Lauren, who left him many years ago. In a sudden impulse to see what she has done with herself, Race agrees to join the team. Nash assigns Van Lewen, a Sergent in the Green Berets, as Race''s bodyguard and they move to the airport to fly to Peru. En route, Nash provides Race with photocopied pages of what turns out to be a copy of the Santiago Manuscript, which describes the adventures of Alberto Santiago a Spanish missionary in Peru whilst also holding the key to the final resting place of a legendary Incan idol, allegedly made of thyrium-261, an element that, when combined with the mass destruction weapon the Supernova, would destroy a third of the Earth''s mass throwing it off from the orbit and effectively killing the planet. The team lands in Peru with mission leader Frank Nash, physicist Troy Copeland, archaeologist Gaby Lopez, anthropologist Walter Chambers, five Green Berets, his personal bodyguard, and his college sweetheart. But when the manuscript leads the team to an ancient Incan temple, the hunt becomes a fight for survival when their raid of the temple is taken over by hostile German terrorists. And the situation becomes even worse for Race and the team when an army of giant "rapa" cats, hellbent on ripping throats, snapping spines and mauling anyone who comes near them. Can Race lead the team to the idol, or is he leading them into disaster, and violent death?

Temple

After a diving team at Wilkes Ice Station is killed, the station sends out a distress signal which is picked up and a team of United States Recon Marines lead by Shane Schofield, code named Scarecrow, arrives at the station. At the station he finds several French scientists have arrive and several more come after the Marine''s arrival. The French however reveal themselves as actual soldiers and a fight ensues in the station, claiming the lives of Scarecrow''s men Hollywood, Legs, Ratman, several scientists, and all of the French soldiers while Mother looses her leg, Samurai is badly injured, and two French scientists are captured. Schofield decides to send a team down to find an object below the ice where the diving team was going to. Later, Samurai is found dead via strangling, leaving the only people he trusts to be one of the scientists, Sarah Hensleigh and another soldier named Montana as he was with them at the time of Samurai''s death. Hensleigh, Montana, and two other Marines, Gant, and Santa Cruz, are sent down to where the diving team vanished. While alone, Schofield is shot and killed. He later wakes up, found to have been accidentally resurrected by his attacker and is in the care of scientists James Renshaw, the believed killer of one of the other scientists at Wilkes. Watching a video of Schofield''s death, they see the attacker and discover it to be one of Schofield''s men, Snake. The two capture Snake before he is able to kill the wounded Mother. Meanwhile in the United States, Andrew Trent and Pete Cameron meet, Cameron being a news reporter and Trent being a former Marine using the alias of Andrew Wilcox to avoid being found by the U.S military who a few years back had tried to kill him. They hear the distress call from Shofield and Trent realizes that what happened to him was happening to Shofield. The team learns of an appending attack by the SAS and decide to flee the station. During the escape via stolen vehicles, Shofield and Renshaw''s is pushed off a cliff, Shofield''s close friend Book and the step-daughter of Sarah Hensleigh, Kirsty, are captured, while Rebound escapes with four of the scientists. Schofield manages to destroy a French submarine and he and Renshaw begin their journey back towards it. Meanwhile, the SAS Brigadier Trevor Barnaby kills the two remaining French scientists and feeds Book to a pod of Killer whales. Schofield returns to the station and manages to kill all of the SAS and Snake, and save Kirsty. Schofield receives a message from Trent with a list of members of a secret service known as the Intelligence Convergance Group which includes Snake and Montana. Gant and her team find what appears to be an alien ship which turns out to be a spy ship. Montana succeeds at killing Santa Cruz but mutated Elephant seals end up killing Montana. Schofield and the two others arrive and Hensleigh reveals herself to be an ICG agent, but is soon killed by a wounded Gant. Remembering the station is about to be destroyed, Schofield, Gant, Renshaw, Kirsty, and a Fur seal named Wendy escape on the spy plane and land on the USS Wasp where they destroy the ship. It is revealed that Mother had escaped Wilkes before its destruction and was saved by US forces. The survivors get to Hawaii where they are nearly killed by an ICG agent before being saved by Trent, Pete and Allison Cameron, and the captain of the USS Wasp. Renshaw assumes custody of Kirsty since he''s the godfather and Shofield doesn''t leave Gant''s side until she recovers.

Ice Station

Charles "Fred" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to anonymously distribute cards for a newspaper competition (this is a variant of "Lobby Lud" in which the name of the person to be spotted is "Kolley Kibber"). The antihero of the novel, Pinkie Brown, is a teenage sociopath and up-and-coming gangster. Hale had betrayed the former leader of the gang Pinkie now controls, by writing an article in the Daily Messenger about a slot machine racket for which the gang were responsible. Ida Arnold, a plump, kind-hearted and decent woman, is drawn into the action by a chance meeting with the terrified Hale after he has been threatened by Pinkie''s gang. After being chased through the streets and lanes of Brighton, Hale accidentally meets Ida again on the Palace Pier, but eventually Pinkie murders Hale. Pinkie''s subsequent attempts to cover his tracks and remove evidence of Hale''s Brighton visit lead to a chain of fresh crimes and to an ill-fated marriage to a waitress called Rose who unknowingly has the power to destroy his alibi. Ida decides to pursue Pinkie relentlessly, because she believes it is the right thing to do, and also to protect Rose from the deeply disturbed boy she has married. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a challenge to Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality. Pinkie and Rose are Catholics, as was Greene, and their beliefs are contrasted with Ida''s strong but non-religious moral sensibility. Main characters *Pinkie: The anti-hero of the story, merciless to his victims, simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by sex and human connection. He is the leader of ''the mob'' despite being the youngest at 17. *Dallow: Pinkie''s second in command - the only member of the mob Pinkie feels he can confide in. *Cubitt Another mob member who lives at ''Frank''s'' with Pinkie and Dallow. He leaves the gang when Pinkie reveals that he (Pinkie) killed Spicer. *Spicer: An aging mob member resident at Frank''s . From the beginning he expresses discomfort with the gang''s increasing violence. Pinkie''s mistrust of him leads to him being murdered by Pinkie for fear of him being ''milky'' and leaking incriminating information to Ida Arnold or the Police. *Rose: A poor, modest, and naive girl who becomes Pinkie''s girlfriend and wife. She is also a Roman Catholic like Pinkie and falls in love with him despite his advances on her being purely to keep her from giving incriminating evidence. Pinkie is usually repulsed by her but later has the occasional feeling of tenderness towards her. *Ida Arnold: Ida takes up the role of the detective, hunting down Pinkie to bring justice to Hale. Although this is her original motive, when she finds out that Pinkie is marrying Rose she does so to save the girl. Ida represents the force of justice in this novel, and in contrast to Pinkie and Rose is on the side of ''Right and Wrong''. She acquires information from Cubitt once he is cast out of the gang which significantly aids her investigation.

Brighton Rock

Bill Cary is a bush pilot living in Lapland in northern Finland, making a precarious living flying aerial survey flights looking for nickel deposits, and occasional charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy in his beat-up old de Havilland Beaver. Towards the end of the flying season, a wealthy American hunter hires him to fly into a prohibited part of Finland near the Soviet border in order to hunt bear. Subsequently, he is assaulted by thugs when he refuses a charter contract to search for a lost Tsarist treasure, comes under suspicion from the Finnish police for smuggling when Tsarist-era gold sovereigns start turning up, and from the Finnish secret police for espionage. However, things get more serious when the wealthy American''s hunter''s beautiful sister turns up to search for her brother, and his fellow bush pilots start getting killed off in a series of suspicious accidents. Cary suspects that the events he is increasingly involved in may stem from an incident in his wartime past.

The Most Dangerous Game

When a military satellite returns to Earth, a recovery team is dispatched to retrieve it; during a live radio communication with their base, the team members suddenly die. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead. The base commander suspects the satellite returned with an extraterrestrial organism and recommends activating Wildfire, the government-sponsored team that counters extraterrestrial biological infestation. The Wildfire scientific team studying the unknown strain is composed of Dr. Jeremy Stone, bacteriologist specialist; Dr. Peter Leavitt, disease pathology; Dr. Charles Burton, infection vectors specialist; and Dr. Mark Hall, M.D., surgeon, biochemistry and pH specialist. Hall is the "odd man", since he is the only one without a spouse. The Robertson Odd Man Hypothesis states that unmarried men are capable of carrying out the best, most dispassionate decisions during crises and he is given the only key that can disarm the self-destruct mechanism. A fifth scientist, Dr. Christian Kirke, anthropologist and electrolytes specialist, was unavailable for duty because of appendicitis. The scientists believe the satellite, which was actually designed to capture upper-atmosphere microorganisms for bio-weapon exploitation, returned with a deadly microorganism that kills by nearly instantaneous disseminated intravascular coagulation (lethal blood clotting). Upon investigating the town, the Wildfire team discovers that the residents either died in mid-stride or went "quietly nuts" and committed bizarre suicides. Two Piedmont inhabitants, the sick, Sterno-addicted, geriatric Peter Jackson; and the constantly bawling infant, Jamie Ritter, are biologic opposites who somehow survived the organism. The man, infant, and satellite are taken to the secret underground Wildfire laboratory, a secure facility equipped with every known capacity for protection against a biological element escaping into the atmosphere, including a nuclear weapon to incinerate the facility if necessary. Wildfire is hidden in a remote area near the fictional town of Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles from Las Vegas using a sort of purloined letter approach, by locating it in the sub-basements of a legitimate Department of Agriculture research station. Further investigation determines that the bizarre deaths were caused by a crystal-structured, extraterrestrial microbe on a meteor that crashed into the satellite, knocking it from orbit. The microbe contains chemical elements required for terrestrial life and appears to have a crystalline structure, but lacks DNA, RNA, proteins, and amino acids, yet it directly transforms matter to energy and vice versa. The microbe, code named "Andromeda", mutates with each growth cycle, changing its biologic properties. The scientists learn that Andromeda grows only within a narrow pH range; in a too-acid or too-basic growth medium, it will not multiply&nbsp;&mdash; Andromeda''s pH range is 7.39–7.43, like that of human blood. That is why Jackson and Ritter survived: both had abnormal blood pH. However, by the time the scientists realize that, Andromeda''s current mutation degrades the plastic shield and escapes its containment. Trapped in an Andromeda-contaminated laboratory, Dr. Burton demands that Stone inject him with Kalocin ("the universal antibiotic"); Stone refuses, arguing it would render Burton too vulnerable to infection by other harmful bacteria. Burton survives because Andromeda has already mutated to nonlethal form. The mutated Andromeda attacks the neoprene door and hatch seals within the Wildfire complex, racing to the upper levels and the surface. The self-destruct atomic bomb is automatically armed when it detects a containment breach, triggering its detonation countdown to incinerate all exo-biological diseases. As the bomb arms, the scientists realize that given Andromeda''s ability to generate matter directly from energy, the organism would feed, reproduce, and ultimately benefit from an atomic explosion. To halt the atomic detonation, Dr. Hall must insert his special key to an emergency substation anywhere in Wildfire. Unfortunately, he is trapped in a section with no substation. He must navigate Wildfire''s obstacle course of automatic defenses to reach a working substation on an upper level. He barely disarms the bomb in time before all the air is evacuated from the deepest level of the Wildfire complex. Andromeda eventually mutates to a benign form and is suspected to have migrated to the upper atmosphere, where the oxygen content is lower, better suiting Andromeda''s growth. The novel''s epilogue reveals that a manned spacecraft, Andros V, was incinerated during atmospheric re-entry, presumably because Andromeda Strain ate the plastic heat shield of Andros V and caused it to burn up.

Thriller

Clear and Present Danger

By Tom Clancy

The Hunt for Red October

By Tom Clancy

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

By Tom Clancy

A Philosophical Investigation

By Philip Kerr

Battle Royale

By Koushun Takami

Rainbow Six

By Tom Clancy

The Lost Symbol

By Dan Brown

Temple

By Matthew Reilly

Ice Station

By Matthew Reilly

Brighton Rock

By Graham Greene

The Most Dangerous Game

By Gavin Lyall

The Andromeda Strain

By Michael Crichton