Author: Preston and Child

Ttile: Gideon's Sword

Publisher: Grand Central

Gideon Crew is the kind of protagonist series are made for.

The creation of the bestselling thriller machine Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Crew is part James Bond and part Sam Spade, an old school, thinking-man's hero facing new school problems. Which makes Gideon's Sword, the first book - presumably of many - to feature Crew a rip-roaring, globe-trotting thriller that's paced like a Mission: Impossible screenplay and just as fun.

The novel opens with some obligatory backstory, as 12-year old Crew witnesses the death of his father Melvin, a government security bigwig. We're lead to believe there's more to that death - Melvin took his office hostage, then stepped outside into a hail of bullets- than met the eye, a hunch that proves correct as the story quickly flashes forward to present day and Crew going rogue from his job at Los Alamos National Lab to enact some high-tech vigilante justice on the man responsible for his father's suspicious death.

Those expository loose ends neatly tied up, Preston and Child turn their attention to the matter at hand: giving Crew his first mission. The US government recruits Child for his services retrieving some sort of MacGuffin from the leg of a turncoat Chinese scientist. What the device does isn't important; the manner in which it's retrieved is.

In roaming the streets of New York tracking down leads on the aforementioned top-secret, world-changing piece of technology, Crew is given room to shine. He's a fantastic character, someone you're sure you've met on the pages of some other thriller somewhere, but can't place. He's got the sad-sack demeanor of a classic noir hero, but the gusto of a spy who knows he's way too charming to lose. He's more finesse than muscle, a ladies' man, a con artist, and always way more brilliant than you'd ever be, which is obviously his appeal. Another strength is the level of detail imbued throughout the novel.

Every setting, from Dubai to Saint Bartholomew's Church, is described with the strictest care for verisimilitude. Street names, restaurants, and subway lines are all recreated with such lovingly painstaking accuracy that one imagines retracing Crew's steps would be feasible.

The strength of Gideon's Sword, however, lies not in these fine achievements, but in the masterful plot. The endorsements on the rear of the dust jacket - from masters like Baldacci and Reichs - use words like "riveting" and "high-velocity," but they're not hyperbole. By the time one reaches the climactic scene, which features a backhoe-a-backhoe showdown between Crew and the chilling uber-assassin Nodding Crane, it's insomnia time.

The fact that this battle takes place on New York's Hart Island, a "potter's field" cemetery for unclaimed body parts (who knew such a place existed?), puts it over the top. Preston and Child are masters of the unexpected plot twist and have mined all corners of their imagination to construct a thriller that's worth all praise. And by giving their protagonist a terminal illness, they've already set themselves the perfect cliffhanger for the second installment, whenever that should arrive. That should be worth the wait.

*This Review First Published 3/8/2011