Rules of Betrayal

Rules of Betrayal by Christopher Reich
Anchor Books, Random House; April 2011
Mass Market Paperback, 528 pages
ISBN-13: 9780307473813
Jonathan Ransom Series #3

http://www.christopherreich.com/

recommended

Synopsis

The most riveting novel yet in Christopher Reich’s New York Times bestselling series—featuring Dr. Jonathan Ransom and his undercover-agent wife Emma, a dangerous woman with a mysterious past who has gone rogue in the high-stakes, serpentine world of international spies.
In 1980, a secret American B-52 crashes high in a remote mountain range on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border. Nearly thirty years later, and spanning locales from those peaks to New York City, a terrible truth will be revealed.
Jonathan Ransom returns as the resourceful doctor thrown into a shadowy world of double and triple agents where absolutely no one can be trusted. To stay alive, Ransom must unravel the mystery surrounding his wife—an enigmatic and lethal spy who plays by her own rules—and discover where her loyalties truly lie.

My Thoughts:

Rules of Betrayal by Christopher Reich is a suspense novel of international intrigue. This is the third novel by Reich featuring Dr. Jonathan Ransom and his undercover-agent wife Emma. In this novel Dr. Jonathan Ransom is in Afghanistan providing medical care when he gets caught in a raid that turns into a firefight. This eventually leads to Jonathan becoming involved with Division, a secret U.S. government agency, and participating in one of their secret missions that involves recovering a once lost nuclear bomb before terrorists get it and perhaps rescuing Emma.

In Rules of Betrayal, Reich provides plenty of plot twists and turns. In his world of espionage the players are all more than capable of betraying each other and no one is safe. Jonathan is entering this world of professionals as an amateur with some good instincts but little training. The bad guys are bad and you might wonder exactly who are the good guys. This results in plenty of tension and a satisfying thriller. As most people will expect, all the narrow escapes in Rules of Betrayal require you to suspend disbelief.

I must confess that I haven't read the previous two novels, Rules of Vengeance and Rules of Deception, featuring Dr. Jonathan and Emma Ransom. Although Rules of Betrayal can most certainly be read alone without the previous two novels, it did feel like I was missing some important backstory that would have help to develop the characters and their history more fully. If you're thinking of reading this series and suspect jumping into the story without all the background information would hinder your enjoyment, it would benefit you to read the previous two novels before this one (and I'm sure there will be a fourth book too).

On the other hand if you are looking for some summer escapism and like novels with international intrigue, then Rules of Betrayal won't disappoint you.This would be a great airplane book/summer vacation reading. recommended

Disclosure: I received this novel through the Goodreads First Reads program.

Quotes:

Zabul Province, Afghanistan
Present day
They formed on the plain at dawn.
Man and beast and machine spread across the hard brown dirt in a line one hundred meters across. There were horses and jeeps and pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on the flatbeds. They numbered only fifty men, and the villagers counted one hundred times that, but they were committed men. Warriors united under the banner of heaven. Sons of Tamerlane.
The commander stood in the rear of his Hilux pickup, binoculars to his eyes, surveying his target. He was tall and formidable, and he wore his black wool turban piled high on his head, the trailing folds wrapped tightly around his face to guard against the bitter cold. His name was Sultan Haq. He was thirty years old. He had been imprisoned for six years, twenty-three hours a day, in a small, clean cage in a hot place far, far away. In deference to his name, and to his habit of growing his fingernails long and keeping them as sharp as a bird of prey's talons, his jailers had called him "the Hawk." pg. 11

Haq's ears perked up. He hadn't heard about a healer in these parts. "Who is this healer?"
The boy looked away.
Haq grabbed the child's jaw in his immense hand, the sharpened nails raising welts on his cheek. "Who?"
"A crusader," someone shouted.
Haq spun. "A crusader? Here? Alone?"
"He's traveling with an assistant. A Hazara who carries medicine for him in a bag."
"Is the healer American?" asked Haq.
"A Westerner," came an answer. "He speaks English and some Pashto. We didn't ask if he was American. He cured many people. He fixed the khan's stomach and repaired my cousin's knee."
Haq released the boy, shoving him backward. His heart was racing, but he hid his anticipation beneath a veil of anger. "Where did he go?"
An elder pointed toward the mountains. "There." pg.17

Jonathan Ransom woke and knew that something was wrong.
Bolting upright, he pulled his sleeping bag to his waist and listened. Across the room, Hamid, his assistant, slept on the ground, snoring. pg. 18

For eight years he had traveled the world as a physician with Doctors Without Borders. He had worked from the top of Africa to the bottom. He had spent time in Kosovo, Beirut, and Iraq, too. Wherever he was located, his mission was to bring medical care to those who needed it most. Politics was not a factor. There were no good guys or bad guys. There were only patients.
He'd arrived in Afghanistan two months before, but he no longer worked for Doctors Without Borders. Events in the recent past prevented him from working in an official capacity as a physician or surgeon for them or anyone else. The man at the American embassy had told him he was crazy to venture into the Red Zone-the Red Zone being anywhere outside Kabul. When Jonathan said he was traveling alone, without bodyguards or weapons or any personal security whatsoever, so that he might offer medical care to people in the remotest villages, the man called him "suicidal." Jonathan didn't think so. He had calculated the risks, weighed them against his responsibilities, and found the balance equal, more or less. pg. 21