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Summary
Summary
"There are plots within plots, circles within circles....Lustbader fans will lap it up." ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION In New York City, a chain of brutal murders begins....In Washington, a plot conceived at the highest levels of American government is at work to bring the economic colossus of Japan to its knees....In Tokyo, a critical power struggle is nearing its final stages for control of the enigmatic Black Blade Society, an ostensibly political cabal whose motives may encompass far more than politicis.... From the Paperback edition.
Author Notes
Eric Van Lustbader was born in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1946. He received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Columbia College in 1968. While still in college, he began work in the entertainment industry by creating his own music production company that included work with such bands as Cheap Trick, Mountain, and Blue Oyster Cult. He is a writer of both thriller and fantasy novels. He has written several series including The Pearl Saga Series, The Sunset Warrior Cycle, The China Maroc Series and The Nicholas Linnear/Ninja Cycle Series. He is also the co-author of the Jason Bourne series, starting with book 4, with Robert Ludlum.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Fans of Lustbader's whirligig exotic actioners (The Ninja, Angel Eyes) will find no lessening of his midair double-somersault reverse plotting here. Throughout Lustbader's 14 novels not a smile has been cracked by his grim heroes, while occult Japanese exotica hook the reader by the jawbone into Lustbader's world of weird powers. Now, it's Japan's secret Black Blade Society that's ready to take over the planet by way of economic aggression. The society, we find, has discovered a way of resisting age--its leader, in fact, is a very old woman who's still young, sexy, and has a familiar kind of Asian luster. This being Japan, however, she's fronted by a great industrialist, the society's nominal head. Rivals to the society include a young Japanese genius of bioscience and his mother-- who've devised an artificial intelligence called ORACLE that works on DNA, has now become superhuman, can suck humans into its intelligence, and no longer needs a power source to keep it going. The mother, though, plays a double or even triple game and appears ready to undermine both her son and the Black Blade Society. Meanwhile, in the States, Wolf Matheson, leader of an NYPD Special Homicide Task Force, is given the murder of billionaire Lawrence Moravia to solve. Moravia, it turns out, was a Black Blade member but also a double agent for a secret US agency now at covert war with Japan. Matheson, the son of a Shoshone and a Texas Ranger, has extrasensory powers, can read auras, and pick images from people's minds. But the villains--and the Japanese heroine--have not only the sight, a mind-reading ability, but also makura no hiruma and can beat you physically with their spiritual inner being--POW!--as they strive to win the powers of ORACLE. Can Wolf's occult muscle match ORACLE's smarts? With hokum this thick Lustbader can't afford a smile--but his comic-book readers will smile long into the night.
Booklist Review
More about those mysterious Japanese from the author of White Ninja. In this heavily-plotted tale blending elements of hard-boiled detective, international thriller, kung fu, and sword & sorcery, the tough-but-sensitive Wolf Matheson is assigned to investigate a chain of murders perpetrated by the furtive Black Blade Society. That's a nationalistic, militaristic, but intellectual cabal that, for centuries, has been nurturing the "Oracle," an enhanced mental state in which practitioners are able to predict the future and attain long lifespans. Alas, the Black Blade is bent on world domination and has been maneuvering events in both the U.S. and Japan toward world war. Wolf, with his sexy-but-clairvoyant Japanese girl friend, Chika, at his side, is equal to the task of saving the world, but he wouldn't be if it weren't for his Shoshone childhood, where shamans knew the same kind of stuff the Black Blade know--that is, mystical stuff. Lustbader pushes a lot of buttons here, most of them having to do with racial fears. He does turn in a genuinely unsettling portrait of a gritty, dark New York City that is like a paranoid vision. Some of his musings on the "Japanese mind" are intriguing. Bruce Lee, with a twist or two. (Reviewed Dec. 15, 1992)0449906000John Mort